LD 9.0 sp3, we use LANDesk for patching our servers, and a batch file software distribution task to run the restart of the servers. It used to distribute the batch files (3 files, under 1mb in size) to the servers very quickly, less than 5 minutes to hundreds of servers. Since our desktop team put in preferred servers(desktops) on their side, the batch file software distribution task takes literally 20 minutes to just download the files. It copies them over from the core server, then goes down the list of preferred servers and tries and tries to download the files???
As a work around, I added in a blank preferred.coreserver.dat file to the reboot task, and replace the current file first, so it forces it not to look at the preferred servers.
We are also seeing this issue on the new version as well, 9.6.