Microsoft`s Strategy to Centralize and Manage Automated Installations: SMS 2003 - Efficiency of SMS Server
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With SMS, system administrators can feel comfortable with certain other features like user maintenance (for tightening security), monitoring server performance, Query based reports, and so on. System administrators will also be able to gather information about hardware and software configurations of every workstation within the network (including remote workstations). System administrators can even track and restrict the software usage of different users working at different workstations.
Where does such a huge amount of information about configurations get stored at SMS? SMS is primarily for management and not for storage. As everybody knows, Microsoft wants all of its software components to be able to integrate with each other. It finally accomplished this with SQL Server database. SMS needs to maintain (of course it automatically manages by itself) at least one SQL Server database to store all if its own configuration information, along with all clients (or workstations) as well. This in turn helps the programmer to query that information and provide it to the web!
The next question in general would be, is it necessary to have Active Directory Services deployed on the network? To which the answer is "No," but there are advantages to using Active Directory with Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003. The advanced security mode of SMS 2003 requires Active Directory and provides easier account management. If you have Active Directory, you can use the Active Directory site boundaries as the SMS site boundaries. And of course, it is quite secure for remote activities, once SMS gets installed over Active Directory Services.
There exists a small drawback to using SMS, which may be big from a system administrator's point of view. It cannot yet support "clustering" natively. Windows Cluster service is not supported for any SMS site systems, including the SMS site database server. But this can still be achieved in some alternate (in-direct) ways, which I will not be able to discuss as they are out of the scope of this article.
Next: Definitions: an SMS Site, Site Client, Site Server, Site System >>
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