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Microsoft Systems Management Server

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Webcast: Implementing the New Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates View the differences between the various scan tools that you can use and learn how to prepare for and implement the new Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates.

Systems Management Server 2003 Evaluation Software

[May 16, 2004] A Window into Microsoft Server Innovations By Susan Kuchinskas

SAN DIEGO -- Microsoft is in the process of bringing all of its server offerings into one system, complete with unified tools for development, management and security, Microsoft vice president Andrew Lees said Tuesday.

Management remains a top priority for Microsoft's Server System, according to Lees. He spoke to some 11,000 customers and partners on the second day of Tech-Ed, Microsoft's conference for developers and IT professionals held this week in San Diego.

Lees, Microsoft corporate vice president for server and tools marketing, announced the Dynamic Systems Initiative, a plan to make designing, deploying and managing complex distributed computing systems easier. Now and over the next few years, Microsoft (Quote, Chart) will deliver many different components of the initiative.

"We're thinking about the overall life cycle for systems, the way they're designed, operated and managed," Lees said. For example, in a future version of Exchange Server, a tool called Systems Center could let a network designer quickly model and test a network expansion. A simple forms-based tool would let the designer set parameters such as how many users would be on the network, when peak hours would be, what time zone they would be in and what their peak hours would be. The tool would suggest a network configuration and run a simulation. The designer could check performance and tweak the architecture using graphical tools.

"This is a glimpse of what we'll work on delivering to you with the Dynamic Systems Initiative," Lees said.

"The hundreds of IT professionals I've talked to tell me that the lack of integration across IT causes complexity, cost and pain," he said. Plugging the Tech-Ed theme of "do more with less," Lees told the audience that Microsoft has made a commitment to allow all servers to be managed through Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), providing a single management console.

Microsoft kicked off Dynamic Systems Initiative today with the release of Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, Windows Storage Server 2003 Feature Pack and release candidate code for MOM 2005 "Express."

As part of the Windows Server System Common Engineering Criteria for 2005, also announced today, Management Packs will be available when products are released, and they'll be updated on the same schedules as the products. "If I'm on the Exchange team, I'm going to design MOM as the way I manage Exchange," Lees said.

Lees announced Windows Server System Infrastructure Environment, providing guidance and support on how best to use elements of the server system. As server product packages are released, they'll include a set of guidelines, solution guidance, patterns and best practices for building on the software. The Microsoft Solutions Architecture has been renamed to Windows Server System Reference Architecture, and it will be part of the guidance package.

Available today is Best Practices Analyzer Tool for Microsoft SQL Server 2000. It gives database administrators some guidelines and recommendations from the Microsoft SQL Server development team, plus a series of system checks to help them prepare for SQL Server 2005. The Best Practices Analyzer will be used across Windows Server System environments.

[June 2003] Microsoft plans November debut for SMS 2003

Microsoft will release its long-awaited desktop management software in November at a conference in Denmark.

The software will be released to manufacturing sometime between September and then, and will be formally released Nov. 11 at the Microsoft IT Forum 2003 in Copenhagen, according to Microsoft.

The ship date for Systems Management Server 2003, which was previously code-named Topaz, has slipped before. The software was originally due out this summer, but it was held in trial longer so Microsoft could tweak some problems that users had complained about. Microsoft executives then said SMS 2003 would ship in September.

Customers have given thumbs up about the latest version of SMS 2003 in general, though those who are on older versions of Microsoft platforms don't get the same functionality as those on the newer versions. Release Candidate 1 was made available July 1, and apparently Microsoft ran into some issues the company wants to isolate and fix, one expert said.

The delay is not terribly important to SMS experts, who said they would rather see a quality product in the end. "We would rather them hold [SMS 2003] than release another [SMS] 2.0-like RTM," said Larry Duncan, a Nashville, Tenn.-based systems management consultant.

Customers agree. "SMS 2.0 is working well enough for us so we're not worried about [the delay]," said Arch Willingham, vice president of T.U. Parks Construction, Chattanooga, Tenn.

Over time, Microsoft plans to merge its three manageability platforms, SMS 2003, Microsoft Operations Manager 2004 and Application Center, into a suite of products, and eventually into one integrated platform called System Center. System Center isn't due to appear until sometime around 2006 or beyond.

Microsoft SMS 2.0 Enterprise Software Update Management

According to Neil Leslie, general manager of Microsoft Corp.'s customer service and support group, the company within six months will release a beta version of Network Monitor 3.0, an upgrade of a tool that has shipped as part of its Systems Management Server (SMS) software. What will be different in the next SMS release, Leslie says, is that Netmon won't have a "90-day time bomb" that turns off the tool unless you buy it. In other words, if you get SMS, you'll get Netmon 3.0. Free. Netmon captures and stores network packets for analysis. It can filter packets by protocol type and let you find devices on your network and track their packet-broadcasting rates. The 3.0 release adds a Visual Basic-like scripting language so you can easily customize it, says Leslie. Today, he notes, you need C and assembler language skills to do so.

Now for the quid pro quo. Leslie says Microsoft will also make available later this year D-Code, its database of the various service and support tools that the company uses internally. The database not only lists what's what, but it also rates the effectiveness of what's what. Leslie says he wants other companies to rate their troubleshooting and analysis tools inside D-Code so the info can be shared broadly. Microsoft giveth, and it asketh.

Gates Details Microsoft Management Initiatives

At the Microsoft IT Forum conference in Copenhagen on Tuesday, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates beat the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) drum, and talked up his vision for Microsoft's gradually emerging autonomic-computing plan. Gates also demo'd "Indy," the performance-management-modeling tool that Microsoft first unveiled in March this year. Microsoft used the IT Forum show as its launch pad for the first public beta of Windows Update Services (WUS, which is the product formerly known as Software Update Services 2.0); and the commencement of worldwide availability for Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and the second version of its solution accelerator tool for deploying Windows XP and Office 2003 desktops.

Recommended Links

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Systems Management Server Home

• Check out the Latest SMS Product Documentation
• Download 40 SMS Scripts

Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 FAQ

Systems & Platform Administration Enterprise Client Management

• Preparing to manage workstations with SMS
• SMS System Discovery
• Creating an SMS Collection
• Installing the SMS Advanced Client
• Creating SMS Software Packages
• Creating SMS Advertisements

• Other SMS Resources

Microsoft TechNet Systems Management Server 2.0 Product Documentation

Microsoft SMS Introducing Systems Management Server

Systems Management Server 2000 -- Index of Articles

Keywords List for Searching
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article: 199435 - This article contains a list of keywords that you can use to search for articles related to Systems Management Server in the Microsoft Knowledge Base using the search engine found at the following Online Support Web page: (updated 931999)

Order the Systems Management Server 2.0 120-day Evaluation Version for $14.95
Start evaluating Systems Management Server 2.0 now with this easy-to-use evaluation version. It includes sample data and instructions to guide users through the most frequently used features and is fully functional so you can explore the more advanced features. It costs just $14.95 plus your local tax. Available for Intel platforms only. Available in North America only.

Introducing Systems Management Server
Chapter 1 - Introducing Systems Management Server Installing and maintaining software is a major cost to corporations with locations across a wide geographical area. In fact, most of the cost of maintaining a corporate computer system comes from the software installation, support, maintenance©not from the initial licensing of the software itself. Getting to Know Systems Management Server
Chapter 2 - Getting to Know Systems Management Server Systems Management Server provides a set of tools for both administrators and users. The administrative tools allow you to manage the system, and to perform administrative tasks such as distributing software and viewing inventory.

Systems Management Server Glossary
Systems Management Server Glossary A access account A user or user group account that is given access to a package on a distribution point. Access accounts are used for security to specify which users or user groups will be permitted to access the package in order to run advertised

Introducing Systems Management Server Version 2.0 
Sample Chapter 1 from the SMS Administration Manual: Introducing Systems Management Server Version 2.0 For most organizations, managing information systems has become an essential, yet complex operation. Microsoft© Systems Management Server version 2.0 (SMS) is designed to help you meet the technical and management challenges.

Systems Management Server 2.0 Release Notes
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article: 215468 - The information contained in this article is from the Systems Management Server 2.0 Release Notes. You can find the Release Notes on the Systems Management Server CD through the Taskpad or by opening Readme.htm in your browser. (updated 1191999) Resource Sites If You've Used SMS Before...
If You've Used SMS Before SMS 1.2 to SMS 2.0 Changes Even a quick look at Systems Management Server version 2.0 (SMS) will reveal substantial changes to its architecture, database structure, and feature set. The following tables summarize the structural and functional changes between SMS

Introducing SMS Version 2.0
Introducing SMS Version 2.0 For most organizations, managing information systems has become an essential, yet complex operation. Microsoft© Systems Management Server version 2.0 (SMS) is designed to help you meet the technical and management challenges of modern systems information  Articles and Whitepapers  SMS Security Essentials
Downloadable whitepaper in Adobe Acrobat format discusses SMS security issues that are relevant to SMS 2.0 with Service Pack 1, computers running Windows NT Server version 4.0. The clients and NetWare configurations that SMS 2.0 supports are also included in this paper. This paper addresses many of the same issues that Chapter 4, "Creating Your SMS Security Strategy" of the Systems Management Server Version 2.0 Administrator's Guide addresses. and also discusses SMS security topics not included in that chapter, providing additional background material and greater detail. Source Microsoft.com

Understanding the Value of IntelliMirror, Remote OS Installation, and Systems Management Server
Understanding the Value of IntelliMirror, Remote OS Installation, and Systems Management Server IntelliMirrorTM, Remote OS Installation, and Microsoft© Systems Management Server work together to offer a full complement of change and configuration management features for 

WMI Terms and Concepts
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article: 216738 - Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Microsoft implementation for Web Based Enterprise Management (WBEM), is an integral component of Systems Management Server version 2.0. (updated 7/17/2000)      

Recommended Books

Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Administrator's Companion --

Must have addition for administrators, June 2, 2004   Reviewer: Jase T. Wolfe (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews     There is no question that if you need to implement or administer SMS, this is a must own. The book covers everything needed to plan and configure your back-end environment, as well as to setup a good administrative model for IT support, application management and end-users control and deployment. This title will also serve as an excellent day to day resource long after you have implemented SMS. Although I completely recommend this title, I found that this book isn't enough completely on it's own to truly cover all the ins and outs of SMS 2003. Microsoft provides two free downloads which I recommend you read and use in conjunction with this title; "Concepts, Planning, and Deployment Guide" and "Operations Guide" (The SMS 2003 Microsoft website also has many other resources for administration).

Microsoft SMS Installer (Book/CD-ROM package): Books