moving configmgr package shares to an alternate location

ever since sms got into the business of managing security updates, it’s been a struggle trying to make sure that distribution points are sized right for the amount of content they’re going to be hosting.  we’re all clowns in a circus and should be quite adept at juggling by now.  :)

once you’re beyond that small hurdle, you may find yourself in the same pickle when you start venturing into OSD.  even in a san world where drive space can magically show up on your server, it’s still often easier to get additional drive space than it is to increase existing drive space.

i had to do a bit of reshuffling recently and found this blog post from the manageability team blog immensely helpful:  http://blogs.technet.com/smsandmom/archive/2008/09/04/moving-the-smspkgc-share-to-a-different-drive.aspx.

there is one caveat though that my coworker enlightened me about.  if you’re using bits-enabled distribution points (and i imagine the majority of us are), you’ll want to make one additional change.  any distribution points utilizing bits will have a corresponding virtual directory which will need to be adjusted to the new location.  to do this, fire up your internet information services (iis) manager.

1. navigate to site server\web sites\default web site\sms_dp_smspkg[x]$.
2. right-click the virtual directory and choose properties.
3. in the local path field, change the path to the new location.

[x above is the drive letter.]

 

here’s a screen shot of what to do.

 

comments always welcome.  hope you get some good mileage out of this.