You can use Network Discovery to find computers on your network that you want to install as SMS clients. After a computer is discovered and SMS has stored a DDR for that computer in the SMS site database, you can then use the Windows Remote Client Installation method to install those computers as clients. However, you can only use the Windows Remote Client Installation method to install computers running Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 operating systems.
Alternatively, if you prefer, you can use the information you gather to assist you in planning your SMS client rollout. After a DDR is stored in the SMS site database for a particular computer, you can view the DDR information by using the collections feature in SMS. Or, you can create reports that help you determine how many computers you have in specific domains, their IP addresses, and computer names. For more information about reporting and SMS, see Chapter 15, “Reporting Options for SMS 2.0,” in this resource guide.
You can use discovery information for planning your SMS site systems and determining how many computers belong to particular subnets. Then, you can plan which client installation methods you will use and when you will enable client installation so that your SMS rollout continues in a manageable fashion. For more information about client installation methods, see Chapter 12, “Upgrading Clients from SMS 1.2 to SMS 2.0,” in this resource guide.