Inventory the Test Lab

After Systems Management Server has been installed in your lab or on your production network, it can begin adding computers to its inventory database as the individual computers log on. You can then use the information in the database to determine which computers are ready for the upgrade to Windows NT Workstation 4.0, and which ones need hardware upgrades. Systems Management Server provides an interface in which you can construct queries to the database. The queries you create can be saved, edited, and copied to other sites as needed. They can then be re-used to perform the pilot and final deployments.

Create a "Windows NT Workstation Capable" Query

To identify the computers that have the hardware requirements to run the Windows NT Workstation operating system, create a query from within Systems Management Server. After you run the query, you can create a Machine Group with the results. Then create jobs to run virus detection software and to install Windows NT Workstation on the computers in that Machine Group. Later, you can run queries against the computers in the Machine Group to make sure that all the computers in the group were upgraded as planned.

To create a query

1. Open the Query window in Systems Management Server Administrator.

2. From the File menu, choose New. The Query Properties dialog appears.

3. In the Query Name text box, type the name for the query. The Query Name must be unique within the site.

4. Optionally, in the Comment box, type a comment for the query.

5. In the Architecture box, select Personal Computer, which is the default.

6. Define the criteria for the query by adding expressions to the Find All Personal Computer Items Where box.

7. Click OK to close the Query Properties dialog box.

Once you have created a query to suit your needs, you are ready to run it. The query is run against the contents of the Systems Management Server database that has been populated by Systems Management Server as individual computers logged on.

To run the query

1. From the File menu of the Systems Management Server Administrator window choose Execute Query. The Queries dialog box appears.

2. Drag the query to the site (in the Sites window) on which you want it to run.

By running the query and dragging or pasting the query results into a Machine Group window, you can create a group of all the computers that you want to upgrade to Windows NT Workstation. This group can then be used in subsequent steps.

You might want to create several different machine groups to deploy different configurations. Use variations of the query to create different groups. All the queries should be tested before proceeding further, to make sure you are selecting only those computers you really want to target.

See Chapter 7, "Queries," in the Systems Management Server Administrator's Guide for more information on creating and executing queries. Also see Chapter 14, "Machine Groups and Site Groups," in the Systems Management Server Administrator's Guide for more information on machine groups.