Different SMS 2.0 features have different hardware requirements. You should take this into account when you consider your site systems, site system roles, load, and placement. To identify the SMS features you want to install, consider your organizational goals and objectives and the business tasks you want to accomplish.
The decision to deploy SMS within an organization is ultimately a business decision. An in-depth knowledge of how your organization can benefit from SMS is critical to successful site hierarchy planning and deployment. Therefore, you need to identify and understand the specific reasons why SMS was chosen for your organization. In other words, you need to know what business tasks SMS must accomplish.
After you identify these tasks, identify the SMS features required to perform these tasks. Table 2.1 lists SMS site hierarchy requirements based on the business tasks that need to be performed in your organization and the SMS features you can use to accomplish these tasks.
Table 2.1 Site Structure and Component Requirements
Business tasks | SMS features | Site structure and SMS feature requirements |
|---|---|---|
| Track hardware and software assets | Hardware and software inventory | Increasing the amount of data to collect from clients will result in a need for more disk space on the site database server.
Frequent inventory cycles require more network bandwidth and processing on the site server at the site (and any parent sites). Inventory also produces files and status messages that must be uploaded from clients across the network and then processed by the sites in a timely fashion. |
| Deliver software to clients for automatic or user-assisted installation | Software distribution | Software distribution requires disk space on distribution points and sufficient network bandwidth between clients and the distribution points.
Software distribution also creates additional status messages that the sites must process. |
| Automatically install software on client computers | SMS Installer scripts | SMS Installer scripts require some disk, memory, and processing resources on the site server. |
| Ensure year 2000 compliance | Product compliance, hardware and software inventory, software distribution, queries, reporting | Product compliance requires the collection of software inventory from clients.
Reports require disk space on the database server for storage. |
| Monitor licenses for software applications | Hardware and software inventory, software metering | Software metering requires a separate SQL Server database, more processing power on the software metering database server, and potentially, several computers to perform the software metering server role. |
| Perform remote troubleshooting of clients | Remote Tools | Remote Tools requires remote SMS Administrator consoles, as well as significant network bandwidth. |
| Diagnose network problems and identify optimization opportunities | Network Monitor, HealthMon | Network Monitor requires the Network Monitor Agent to be installed on a computer in each subnet you want to monitor. Capturing real-time network data is a processor-intensive activity and should not be performed on site systems.
HealthMon requires the HealthMon Agent to be installed on the computers you want to monitor. |
Understanding the costs and benefits associated with each SMS feature, and the effects of those features on your SMS hierarchy, can be complex. Understanding that each SMS feature is linked with specific hardware requirements enables you to begin your initial SMS site design. In “Determining Site System Hardware Requirements,” later in this chapter, you will learn how to match SMS features with site system hardware requirements.