You will need to survey a representative sample of your organization to identify the hardware and software typically used on client and server computers. By doing this sample inventory of your organization's active equipment, you can accurately simulate the organizational environment in the lab. Such a simulation helps you make broad decisions about your organization's computing infrastructure, such as which network protocols to use, or which desktop configuration best fits the applications used in your organization. Simulating the network environment also helps you configure client computers for use in a mixed environment of operating systems, servers, and network protocols.
When you are ready for final deployment, you will need a more complete inventory of the computers in your organization. The longer the time between inventory and deployment, the more chance there is for components to be replaced, or disk space filled, in the interim. These changes could cause the installation of Windows NT Workstation to fail. For best results, a complete and accurate inventory should be performed just before deployment.
Software management tools are available to help you ascertain the hardware and software configurations of computers on your network. For detailed information about a large number of computers on a network, use a system management program such as the Microsoft Systems Management Server to conduct the inventory.