Any Post starting with this disclaimer means that this post was not written by me however I liked it and added to my blog. I will also include the link to the original or similar post to provide credit to the original author

OCS MVP Elan Shudnow wrote a great article on best practice for creating the OCS Enterprise pool on the Front End or the SQL Server. http://www.shudnow.net/2009/06/01/create-pool-run-on-ocs-or-sql-server/

Microsoft recommends creating the enterprise pool on the Backend SQL Server instead of the Front End pool. The exception to this is if the Backend SQL Server is running a different processor architecture than the OCS environment. 32-bit for R1 and 64-bit for R2. This breaks down into the following table taken from Elan Shudnow’s post:

OCS R1 with SQL 32-bit – Create Pool on SQL
OCS R1 with SQL 64-bit – Create pool on OCS FE
OCS R2 with SQL 32-bit – Create Pool on OCS FE
OCS R2 with SQL 64-bit – Create Pool on SQL

The article goes into specific details about the how and why this is recommended. Bottom line is that LCSCMD from the OCS installation media is the easiest way to create the pool from the SQL Server. This method eliminates the need to install any pre-requisites needed by the OCS setup GUI. See Creating Pools (Command Line) on Technet.

Thanks to Jamie Schwimm for the breakdown of the original post by Elan Shudnow: http://waveformation.com/2009/06/01/create-ocs-2007-enterprise-pool-on-front-end-or-sql/