Windows server or System center?

[Thor]

I need some advice please, might be a bit out of my depth here since I used windows server back when MCSE and MCSA was still "THE" qualification to have.

I want to do the following two things:

I have one main PC that will act as the server. From there I want to deploy windows installation over the lan to 300 machines. I also want all 300 to only update from the main server and not directly to the internet.

For the update I understand I will need WSUS which works only on Windows server correct? For the deployment of windows installations I understand I will need System Center?

My questions:

Is Windows server and system center the same thing or two separate OSes??
What is the cost I am looking at licence wise (exclude the 300 windows licences, just looking at the server now)

 

[Zyraz]

I need some advice please, might be a bit out of my depth here since I used windows server back when MCSE and MCSA was still "THE" qualification to have.

I want to do the following two things:

I have one main PC that will act as the server. From there I want to deploy windows installation over the lan to 300 machines. I also want all 300 to only update from the main server and not directly to the internet.

For the update I understand I will need WSUS which works only on Windows server correct? For the deployment of windows installations I understand I will need System Center?

My questions:

Is Windows server and system center the same thing or two separate OSes??
What is the cost I am looking at licence wise (exclude the 300 windows licences, just looking at the server now)

SCCM for deployments and updates
Windows server is the OS , SCCM is a software suite

 

[Thor]

SCCM for deployments and updates
Windows server is the OS , SCCM is a software suite

Okey so SCCM runs on Windows server?

I have never used SCCM before.

 

[Zyraz]

Okey so SCCM runs on Windows server?

I have never used SCCM before.

sccm 2012 training for beginners OSD - Part 1

[video=youtube;R2qQ62qRX38]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2qQ62qRX38[/video]

 

[Thor]

I assume it runs on windows then?

Price?

 

[Zyraz]

I assume it runs on windows then?

Price?

Yes it is designed for a Windows environment

Unfortunately i don't have that information .
I dont really deal with purchasing and sales .

<EDIT : a quick google found the following>

For example, SCCM requires both a server and client management license to be purchased. ... The Standard management license (ML) has a list price of $1,323 that licenses two Operating System Environments (OSEs). The Datacenter ML price is $3,607 for unlimited OSEs per two physical processor sockets.May 9, 2017

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/system-center-pricing
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/51a8xw/how_much_does_sccm_cost/

 

[Asha'man X]

Can't help with pricing, but you can use Microsoft's own free MDT to install Windows 7-10. I use it on top of the native Windows WDS feature so that I get multicast support and don't kill the network when imaging a computer lab. SCCM will let you do a heck of a lot more fancy things including a zero touch installation, but MDT does a bloody good job for a free toolkit.

Also, WSUS is an amazing bandwidth saver when you are patching 170+ PC's like I am. I shudder to think how much bandwidth WSUS has saved my school over the years I've had it deployed...

 

[Moosedrool]

System center is used to manage stuff like your os and so forth. I run vcenter for our esxi hosts and stuff along with system center for managing the internal windows environment.

 

[Thor]

Let me read up on MDT, might be a good start since this server setup seems to be near 70K in licences.

 

[sajunky]

Sorry to interrupt, but I understand that to use SCCM you need to have licence for this software and also Windows 10 Enterprise licences for each PC, as this software also controls licence depolyment. Can you deploy Windows updates to the upgraded Win10 Pro PC's or only enterprise version?

@OP, please report your finding on MDT. I see potential problem with Win10 Pro, as since v.1607 Group Policy is not mandatory, but provisional. It means that weaponised Windows can ignore anything you set in GPE and individual clients will update individually when Microsoft desires to do so.

 

[Moosedrool]

System center is used to manage stuff like your os and so forth. I run vcenter for our esxi hosts and stuff along with system center for managing the internal windows environment.

Yeah I can't help you with that and phoning Microsoft for advise on this makes you even more confused at their licensing not to mention hosting desktops on a 3rd party virtualisation platform and trying to figure out what the costs will be for Citrix or VMware horizon.

Try building a Shared terminal server (server 2016 aka the we charge per core) with the resources to cater for 50 users at the same time on a 3rd party virtualisation platform. We had MS on site only trying to sell my customer hyper-V cause he didn't know how to license the VM.