To take advantage of the scalability of Systems Management Server (SMS) version 2.0 and to anticipate system loads and maximize your system performance, you need a clear idea of how your network will respond when you deploy SMS. The first step to a successful deployment or network expansion is to complete a pilot project as introduced in Chapter 2, “Designing Your SMS Site Hierarchy and Running the Pilot Project.”
When you create a pilot project, you must create a site hierarchy similar to the one you have planned for your production site. SMS Site Properties Manager makes it easy to copy site properties (such as client agent settings or discovery method settings from one site to another or to change) from one set of site properties to another. Use Site Properties Manager to export and import configurable objects, such as site configuration settings and collection definitions, in any SMS 2.0 site.
Your pilot project also requires data that mimics the load you will create on the hardware in your SMS sites. You need many different types of data to test system performance under all types of network conditions, and this data must be as close to real site data as possible. SMS Object Generator allows you to create realistic synthetic data and synthetic load for your pilot project.
Synthetic data is data that appears to be generated by clients, site systems, or child sites that do not actually exist. Synthetic load is the load on an SMS site imposed by synthetic data. For example, synthetic software inventory data that appears to arrive from 1000 clients can give you an idea of the load that software inventory data from 1000 real clients will impose on your production site.
SMS Object Generator, SMS Site Properties Manager, and SMS Console Load Simulation are scalability tools included as a subset of the SMS tools in the Microsoft BackOffice 4.5 Resource Kit. The SMS Console Load Simulation tool is described in Chapter 14, “Using SMS 2.0 Tools — Part 2.”
This chapter includes the following sections:
To gain the most benefit from the “Using SMS Site Properties Manager” section of this chapter, you should be familiar with site configuration settings. For more information, see Chapter 8, “Configuring SMS Sites,” in the SMS 2.0 Administrator’s Guide.
To gain the most benefit from the “Using SMS Object Generator” section of this chapter, you should be familiar with the objects produced by an SMS site. For an overview of these objects, see Chapter 1, “Introducing Systems Management Server Version 2.0,” in the SMS 2.0 Administrator’s Guide. For detailed information about specific objects, see the related flowcharts in Chapters 16 through 25 of this book.