Designing Your SMS Site Hierarchy and Running the Pilot Project

To deploy Systems Management Server (SMS) version 2.0 successfully, you need to identify your organization’s business needs, understand the current management processes in place, and understand the current infrastructure. Then, you must design an SMS site hierarchy that meets those needs.

Before you deploy SMS, it is critical that you test your site hierarchy design. To do so, you should create a pilot project (a smaller-scale version of your full site hierarchy) that you can run in a test environment. You can then use the data that you gather from this pilot project and the experience that you gain to refine your final site hierarchy design and implementation.

This chapter describes the process of designing, testing, troubleshooting, and refining an SMS site hierarchy. This chapter addresses the following topics:

• Identifying Objectives
• Determining Site System Hardware Requirements
• Client Hardware Considerations
• Creating and Running the SMS Pilot Project

To gain the most benefit from this chapter, be sure that you are thoroughly familiar with the following chapters in the SMS 2.0 Administrator’s Guide:

• Chapter 1, “Introducing Systems Management Server”
• Chapter 3, “Planning for SMS in Your Organization”