The following should be considered when choosing which machines in your network will serve as Policy Proxy Servers:
The number of clients that can be supported by a single Policy Proxy Server depends on the speed and availability of resources on the server hosting the proxy and the network segments involved.
Recommendation: In small organizations with a single office location, the CA TM Server can often adequately serve as the only Policy Proxy Server. This is the simplest configuration; however, this deployment option is not recommended for medium-to-large organizations.
Recommendation: For larger organizations with multiple networks and locations, you should specify at least one Policy Proxy Server for each location. Policy Proxy Servers should be used across wide area network (WAN) links to help reduce traffic across those network paths. A simple rule of thumb is to provide one proxy per subnet, as close to the CA TM Agent machines as possible, and scaled to update a maximum of 4,000 nodes.
Limitations on the number of clients a Policy Proxy Server can handle are based on each machine's physical structure and role in the organization. If the server is given too many devices to update, policy distribution and content update may not be completed on all of the clients in a timely fashion. For example, a 4 CPU 3 GHz multiprocessor with 4 GB memory could be scaled to 4,000 nodes per Policy Proxy with room to grow. A single 3 GHz CPU could support 2,500 nodes.
Recommendation: File and print servers are typically adequate machines for hosting the Policy Proxy Server. The Policy Proxy Server can be located on the same machine as the Redistribution Server.
Domain controllers are less-utilized. Do not use application and database servers, as they are critical to the organization and tasking them with the additional responsibility of acting as Policy Proxies could impact their performance. Using a high-traffic server restricts the number of clients that can be updated.
To serve as a Policy Proxy Server, a computer must be running the CA TM Agent.