SCCM OSD Task sequence slow package download

Many of us want to find out;

Where the package is coming from when running the task sequence? Or

Is the SCCM task sequence downloading the package from local DP or remote DP?  or

Why the package download is slow when running in task sequence? Well these are million dollars questions.

Recently I have deployed 40+ distribution points in low bandwidth sites in the environment. Some of the sites worked very well and the performance has increased significantly. Whereas some sites are slow like before even these sites have their local DP’s. Being remote sites and running of a slow link, it was difficult for us to troubleshoot the issues. It became a painful task for us and as well as the technicians to collect and review the logs. Then the question came how can we easily identify the download location without going through the logs and spending hours on the phone with the technicians?

Well… there is another and easy way to get the content download location by using %_SMSTS<PackageID>%

By using this method, we can actually see the content download location on the task sequence progress window. We can also customise the information for the download location I,e UNC path of the content location or HTTP.

This is what we need to do ;

Open the Task Sequence in Task Sequence editor then select the package which you want to see where it is getting downloaded from. In this example I have selected Toolkit package.

Change the name filed of the toolkit package to Applying Toolkit package from (Any desired name you want to keep it): %_SMSTSLAB00012%

You need to replace the package ID LAB00012 to your package ID.

When running the task sequence, the content download location will be displayed as below;

If you want to get the HTTP path instead of UNC path, you need to change the line from %_SMSTS<PackageID>% to %_SMSTSHTTP<PackageID>%

When running the task sequence, the content download location will be displayed as below;

That’s it. Now everyone knows where the task sequences packages are coming from.