Using Systems Management Server to Analyze Your Network Infrastructure

How Systems Management Server Can Expedite Windows 2000 Deployment

SMS can help you plan your Windows 2000 deployment by answering a wide variety of important questions. It can help you deploy Windows 2000 by:

Preparing your computers.
Distributing the Windows 2000 source files close to user computers.
Initiating the Windows 2000 upgrades in a controlled, secure manner.
Reporting the status of the deployment.

SMS can also help you resolve problems related to the deployment, and provide an in-place Windows 2000 infrastructure management structure when deployment is complete.

This chapter focuses on how you can use SMS to collect the details about your network infrastructure that you need for Windows 2000 deployment. You can use a variety of reporting tools to format data in easy-to-use reports. For further analysis, you can extract information to other programs, such as Microsoft® Excel. And, you can use the collected information to automate deployment tasks.

The information you collect allows you to answer a variety of important deployment planning questions, such as:

How many computers do you have? Where are they? Do they have hardware with sufficient capacity for Windows 2000? Which computers have hardware that is incompatible with Windows 2000?
What software is installed on your users' computers? What software are they actually using? Which computers have software that is incompatible with Windows 2000?
How much capacity is available on your network links? Which protocols are used on your network?

You will also learn how SMS can help with application compatibility issues.

Note

Another important benefit of using SMS in your deployment of Windows 2000 is its ability to distribute Windows 2000 to computers to be migrated and then to initiate the upgrade and report on its status. These topics are discussed thoroughly in "Using Systems Management Server to Deploy Windows 2000" in this book.