I've just installed Desktop Central and we have 1 head office and 7 remote offices.

I've deployed the distribution server software to the remote offices and they show up in desktop central as remote offices. I've also deployed agents at the remote offices and they seem to report in the way they should. However, I have not installed the distribution server software on the HQ Desktop Central server (Do I need to do this?)

My OU structure looks like this:

---- HQ (192.168.1.0 subnet)

       |--- RemoteOffice1 (With DistServer1, and client computers) (192.168.11.0 subnet, 2 MBit connection)

       |--- RemoteOffice2 (With DistServer2, and client computers) (192.168.12.0 subnet, 2 MBit connection)

... and so on

I've created a software deployment task to deploy "Adobe Reader 9.3" (EXE) to the OU "HQ". By this, I want Adobe Reader to be installed to all computers in the HQ OU and all OU's under the HQ OU, remote offices included.

I have a central software repository at the HQ: \\HQFileServer\Install$\Software, and defined as such in DesktopCentral.

My Adobe Reader 9.3 package in DesktopCentral looks something like this:

\\HQFileServer\Install$\Software\Adobe\AdobeReader93.exe and switches for silent install etc.

All users and computers can access the share above. Installed flawlessly to my 2 test computers, one in the head office, one in a remote office.

Now, I'm wondering a few things:

1) Will the Distribution Servers pick up the task and the software from \\HQFileServer and store it locally before it is pushed to clients? If so, when does this occur and how can I verify this? Will the software then be removed from the distribution server when all computers have got the software installed or will it be cached on the distribution servers until I remove the configuration? If I update the AdobeReader93.exe at \\HQFileServer, will that change be noted by DesktopCentral (if filename is still the same)? Or do I have to re-deploy the configuration? Do I need to use the "Copy" option in this case?

OR

2) Will the Distribution Servers pick up only the task to install the software, send it to the agents in the remote offices, and will the agents then pick up the software from \\HQFileServer and install it over the slow WAN links? If I have 5 clients booting up at the same time, and all 5 of them tries to pull 50 MB of software over the WAN-links, it will be slow as hell...

Hope you can give me some insight...