Microsoft
MicrosoftAndy, question about connected cache and slow link sites. I work with an education customer supporting a lot of slow links between branches. One internet connection exists in the main office. All branch offices go through the main branch to the internet.
Currently with Delivery optimization and a rule to restrict peering to subnets, we have great control over peers not flooding the pipes for updates and ensuring a machine in location A on 56k isn't trying to serve content to other machines in location B, C and D, also on 56K. For example, the first box gets the updates from Windows Updates, populates its own cache, the second box on the same subnet grabs the cached files from box one. Box three on a different subnet now has to go back to Microsoft for its updates since no peer exists on its subnet.
Can connected cache be configured so that box 1 (first in org to request content), goes to Microsoft gets the content and drops it onto the connected cache server. Box 2 is in the same subnet so it gets its content from box 1. Box 3 is in an entirely new subnet not local to Box 1 or 2 or the connected cache server. Can box 3 be configured to fetch its needed content from the connected Cache server since box 1 seeded the connected cache. And can box 4 local to box 3 receive its bits from box 3 peer to peer still? What I am trying to do is limit the number of internet connections needed to serve out patches. Currently at least one machine per location needs to hit the Windows update internet site. The documentation as a numbered list Microsoft Connected Cache - Configuration Manager | Microsoft Docs but I am a little lost understanding the behaviour in "how it works" section of the documentation.
The connected cache will be a no brainer for the large 1000+ computer branch offices. While there is multiple subnets, the backbone to the MECM server is multigigabit. Those machines will fetch it from the local server.
