We recently started to roll out Windows 10 and started to see spikes on our WAN links caused by the increased size of updates. We looked at installing local DP’s on each site but this would add a lot of over head for managing these DP’s.
We then looked at using branch cache, I decided to do a post on enabling branch cache in SCCM.
First I need to check on clients if branch cache was enabled to do this run the below command.
netsh branchcache show status all
Once confirmed we need to enable branch cache in SCCM client settings this can be either enabled on an existing device policy or create a new policy I am going with a new policy.
Logon to SCCM Admin console > Administration > Client settings
Right click on client settings > Create Custom Client Device Settings
Give the policy a Name and select Client Cache Settings
set the below settings
- Change Configure BranchCache to Yes
- Change Enable BranchCache to Yes
- Configure the cache size settings (default is 10%)
Once the policy has been setup just need to deploy to the required collections that have the clients that branch cache needs to be enabled on.
As part of Windows 10 OS it does it’s own branch Cache while downloading updates and it will overwrite SCCM client settings. To disable this setting we can create a group policy and apply just to windows 10 OS’s.
Below is the location of the settings that need to be disabled
Computer Configuration \ Policies \ Administrative Templates \ Windows Components \ Delivery Optimization, set (Download Mode) to disabled
If the policy is not showing it is probable because the ADMX template for windows 10 has not been added.
The last part is to enable Branch Cache in SCCM for the distribution points by selecting the properties of the distribution point as given below.
To test that the policy has been applied, go to a client device and update the machine policy. Then run netsh command again and we should now see branch cache has been enabled.
netsh branchcache show status all
TheSleepyAdmins 
Great article. You mentioned this was used to reduce overhead of adding DPs to local sites. Was BC enabled at the PSS location?
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Hi Rasheedah
We didn’t enabled on the clients in the site that has the primary site server.
We just did it for remote sites with client OS any servers in our DC’s just go directly to the local DP. There shouldn’t be any issue enabling on the clients in the DC sites though just not something we though would save a lot of bandwidth.
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Thank you this was an excellent article!
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