Delivery Optimization: Scenarios and configuration options
Published Oct 30 2018 11:44 AM 45.3K Views
Microsoft

In many business networks, downloading apps and updates can be slow, inefficient, and, in many markets, expensive. When speaking with our customers, we often hear that they have regional facilities in limited and/or metered markets where devices download the same content, redundantly impacting coveted bandwidth and, ultimately, the organization’s financial bottom line. In almost any network, Delivery Optimization can be a highly effective tool, efficiently delivering content to devices and reducing the need for more internet bandwidth.

This post outlines some potential scenarios that your organization might be required to accommodate, and the options you have when configuring Delivery Optimization to help you manage bandwidth. While these scenarios may not align strictly to real-life scenarios, this case study of Microsoft’s use of Delivery Optimization provides deeper insight into using peer-to-peer update distribution on a large scale.

Scenario 1

Imagine an organization that resides on a single floor of a skyscraper in a large city. They have two VLANs configured, one for the wired desktops used by developers, and another for their servers, including some build servers. The workstations run Windows 10 Enterprise, and the build servers run Windows Server. Every device is connected to the organization’s Active Directory domain. Each workstation also has multiple Office 365 applications installed, and some developers have downloaded the Ubuntu app from the Microsoft Store, which is over 200 MB in size.

Since the workstations and servers are running and connected to power almost all the time, the IT administrator believes that the devices would benefit from caching chunks of their downloads for a long period of time so that new devices joining the network can download almost everything locally, including new Windows and Office updates, drivers, and common applications like the Ubuntu app. Devices will only download missing chunks of data from the internet (from an HTTP source) when those portions of the data aren’t available from other devices on the network. The administrator configures devices to cache parts of downloaded apps and updates for a maximum of 7 days, instead of the default, which is up to 72 hours.

The administrator also configures Group Download mode so that devices share content with other devices on the same domain, as shown below.

scenario1.png

Since the servers reside on a different VLAN, by grouping devices by domain rather than using the default LAN download mode (which only groups devices behind the same NAT), the servers can be included in peer downloads and uploads across VLANs. The administrator could have also configured the office as an Active Directory site, and grouped devices by AD site instead.

Scenario 2

After several years of use, the organization has workstations that no longer meet the hardware requirements of the developers, and some of those workstations have begun to fail. In addition, the build servers have begun to run low on space as more developers use the server.

The IT department issues each developer a high-end laptop, also running Windows 10 Enterprise, that has the latest wireless network technology and a large amount of storage. Worried about Delivery Optimization not being as effective since Delivery Optimization is not used while mobile devices are running on battery, the IT administrator configures Delivery Optimization to upload content to other devices when the battery percentage of a device is above 60%. The administrator also disables the Peer-to-Peer option for all servers, thereby freeing them up for higher demand tasks and storage. Since there is a high volume of laptops with plenty of storage, content is cached across many devices and there are almost always some peers available.

Scenario 3

Since the new laptops come with large internal hard drives, very little space is being used on each device, so the IT administrator believes that there is space available for smaller and less commonly downloaded content. The administrator configures Delivery Optimization to be enabled for downloads over 10 MB in size, instead of the 50 MB default, to include other small apps that are commonly downloaded by users, such as Microsoft Remote Desktop. The Delivery Optimization cloud service then recommends which content needs more peer sources so that the devices can prioritize what to cache.

Scenario 4

To accommodate an increasing number of developers in its user base, the organization opens another office in another city, this time with multiple subnets for each floor of the building. The IT department connects the networks for both office buildings and shares a single public IP address between the offices, but, as the bandwidth between offices is limited and expensive, they do not want Delivery Optimization to attempt to share content between locations, even though the devices in both locations are on the same domain and have the same external IP address.

The IT administrator opts to configure Delivery Optimization to group by the existing boundary groups that have been set up for both locations. Using System Center Configuration Manager, the administrator enables Delivery Optimization to use boundary groups to define the groups for peers. Each device within each boundary group is stamped with a Group ID that will be sent to the Delivery Optimization service to show its boundary group membership as shown below.

scenario4.png

In this scenario of a hub-and-spoke network topology, grouping devices as peers within boundary groups provides a more accurate and dynamic method of customizing the groups. When a device roams between office locations, it will join the boundary group assigned by that location and adopt the correct Delivery Optimization peer group.

Delivery Optimization at Microsoft

While fictional scenarios can describe a variety of situations, it is important to understand how well Delivery Optimization can work in real businesses, such as here at Microsoft. Our tens of thousands of co-managed devices were able to download the internal pre-release of the latest feature update mostly from peers, and we achieved about 69% peer usage. For all co-managed devices at Microsoft, downloaded chunks are cached for 7 days and our IT department monitors the results via Delivery Optimization analytics.

To learn how we use Delivery Optimization at Microsoft, see this case study from IT Showcase.

For more information on the configurations discussed above, see Delivery Optimization download modes and peer caching options.

We hope these example scenarios and the real-world example from Microsoft provide insight into how Delivery Optimization can improve the efficiency of Office, application, and operating system updates across your network.

  


Continue the conversation. Find best practices. Bookmark the Windows 10 Tech Community.

Looking for support? Visit the Windows 10 IT pro forums.

  

14 Comments
Deleted
Not applicable

Sadly, in my real-world scenario, Delivery Optimization is far from useful. We have many computers that must never connect to the Internet. That means they never use Delivery Optimization. Never.

Updating Windows and Microsoft Office on these devices is not a problem; we have deployed WSUS. But Microsoft Store apps cannot benefit from WSUS. They receive no updates for prolonged periods of time. This is not a severe problem though, owing to the fact that Microsoft Store apps are far from being dependable strategic assets. Still, if Microsoft intends to promote its new store and app ecosystem, that's one problem to solve.

Silver Contributor

Related to comment above i also wanted to ask if this only works when devices update from Windows Update services? Maybe even only if joined to Azure AD? Our devices get Windows updates (also Features updates) from internal WSUS. I guess it is not very critical if all of them download updates and do not share among themselves. WSUS server is powerful enough to manage the load. But we do not manage Office 365 updates, so all of them go from internet. Delivery Optimization could be useful in this case. But i wonder if it even works in this case, when PCs are local AD joined only. Office updates are not causing problems (we have a very good internet connection here), but optimization can still be useful.

Microsoft

Delivery Optimization works even if you use WSUS to manage the updates. To use Peer-to-Peer the devices need to have direct internet connection (and can reach out to the Delivery Optimization Cloud Service). Office 2016, Office 2019 and Office 365 ProPlus now use Delivery Optimization so you can certainly add that extra optimization with Peer-to-Peer. 

Deleted
Not applicable

Well, they don't. Internet connectivity means impaired productivity. (We can't afford falling behind production schedule because someone on the Facebook is wrong!)

On the whole, I don't trust Delivery Optimization. Even if we assume that it does any good (which I doubt), its effect is not tangible. It is impossible to measure and quantify it.

Copper Contributor

Narkis, the whole problem is requiring internet connectivity for the optimization service.  I get the concept -- but there's various organizations that are prevented from using DO because of requiring sending data to the cloud.  At least allow the option of WSUS or SCCM to manage Delivery Optimization within an enterprise.

 

Especially with the Windows 10 1803 release, the available controls within gpedit to manage this service seems quite impressive, but SCCM doesn't have anywhere near the ability to manage these options within client settings - only allowing clients to understand boundaries.  Not every company has the ability to just let clients go to the internet/cloud service.  

Silver Contributor

Narkis Engler, thanks for the response. So it won't work out of the box? One has to add some group policy in place to enable peer-to-peer sharing? Btw, Pro version here, not Enterprise.

Microsoft

Oleg K - it does work out of the box. Download Mode 1 (LAN) is enabled on all Windows Desktop SKU by default. Depending on your network topology though, you may want to change the configuration. Please checkout this page to learn more: http://aka.ms/waas-do

 

Quentin - Feedback heard loud and clear. Thank you! 

Deleted
Not applicable

@Narkis EnglerPlease do not underestimate what I said above about quantifying. In the past, I went before the management and requested a Windows Server upgrade, on the grounds that it has WSUS, which drops our bandwidth costs to 1/400. The phrase "99.75% daily cost saving" alone defeated all oppositions. They asked for a demonstration to verify my claim and I gave them.

 

But I cannot go before them and ask for an upgrade to Windows 10 on the grounds that it has Delivery Optimization; or if we have already upgraded, get authorization for enabling Delivery Optimization. I don't have any numbers to show them. (And they don't trust Microsoft's numbers.) And I can't demonstrate anything reliably. Worse than that, business and management is all about control. That thought of relinquishing control to some Microsoft-owned Internet-based server puts their shields up. (Read: The thought of relinquishing control to Microsoft!)

Microsoft

Being able to measure the bandwidth savings is absolutely critical.

You could use one of the PowerShell cmdlets Delivery Optimization provides to see how much bandwidth is coming from Peer devices vs. HTTP: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/waas-delivery-optimization#windows-powers...

 

Or you could leverage Windows Analytics to do the same across multiple devices in your organization: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/upgradeanalytics/2018/03/28/announcing-delivery-optimization-ins... 

 

 

 

Although all of these options have internet connectivity as a pre-requisite. I understand this is a blocker for you currently. 

Copper Contributor

Hi, I think this is a very beneficial feature for many customers of MS. 

The question I have is if this feature can also be used for other traffic which should be deployed to many computers in branches. There are technologies out there like Adaptive provides but this is integrated and seems designed from scratch having modern management in mind.

So the idea would be id a folder can be defined which than will be provided to other "peers".

 

Thanks,

Horst

Copper Contributor

If we use the subnet aware setting for Delivery Ops for 1803 and greater, does this still require Internet connectivity?  Seems like it shouldn't because we simply want subnet peers to share -- similar to Branch Cache.  Separate question -- we have Branch Cache enabled currently for sharing of updates via internal WSUS and SharePoint.  Is it advisable to have both DO and Branch Cache enabled?  DO will handle Windows and Store updates and O365, while Branch Cache will continue to support SharePoint.  Is this a possible supported scenario?  

Silver Contributor

I think that for DO to operate in any scenario every machine has to be able to connect to main DO service in the cloud to get its settings and report what bits it has.

Copper Contributor

The thing to keep in mind here folks is that the P2P content consumer needs to ensure the integrity of the content. This means that it must first download the content hash from the trusted source. In the case of BranchCache, that content source is internal. Delivery Optimization is a technology that provides P2P consumable content from a Microsoft cloud based source. As a content hash can only be downloaded from the trusted source a BranchCache client can obtain those hashes internally while a DO content consumer requires internet connectivity.

Copper Contributor

The Need for internet access from all clients is certainly a braking point for many on premise infrastructure.
The second braking point is the Data Download cost from Azure if the distribution is via an SCCM Cloud Distribution Point.
EX: With more then 200 sites, delivering the latest Windows OS version would be very costly…

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