Analyzing Your Network Infrastructure

A critical step in your Windows 2000 deployment is preparing your network infrastructure. In order to have your network ready for deployment, you need to perform a variety of tasks, beginning with an analysis of the current state of your network infrastructure.

Primary tasks you will perform when analyzing and preparing your network for Windows 2000 deployment include the following:

• Identify computers that do not have sufficient or compatible hardware.
• Upgrade hardware.
• Identify computers with software that is not compatible or that will not operate properly with Windows 2000.
• Identify the applications most often used, so that compatibility testing is done on all of the most important applications.
• Analyze network usage to determine network capacity availability, protocols in use, and which computers are being used as servers.
• Upgrade incompatible applications.
• Ensure that incompatible applications are not used.

Systems Management Server (SMS) provides you with the tools you need to perform these tasks most efficiently in an enterprise environment.

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