Planning Your SMS Deployment and Configuration

  • Article

Before you run Microsoft® Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 Setup, it is important that you allocate plenty of time and resources to planning your SMS deployment. This planning can occur with both the hierarchy design phase described in Chapter 8, "Designing Your SMS Sites and Hierarchy," and capacity planning, described in Chapter 9, "Capacity Planning for SMS Component Servers."

In the hierarchy design phase, you design your SMS sites and test them in a representative test lab that closely replicates your production environment. Based on these test results, you create a deployment and configuration plan, test the plan, and run the pilot project. Finally, you refine your deployment plan and any necessary hierarchy design modifications based on the analysis and the conclusions from the pilot project. Only then are you ready to deploy SMS 2003 in your production environment.

In This Chapter

  • Strategies for Planning

  • Site Deployment Planning

  • Site Configuration Planning

  • Client Deployment Planning

  • The Pilot Project

If you follow the guidelines in the rest of the "Planning" part of this book and complete the steps in this chapter, you should be well prepared to deploy SMS 2003.

This chapter does not describe any scenarios for upgrading to SMS 2003. If you plan to upgrade to SMS 2003, see Chapter 14, "Upgrading to SMS 2003."

For More Information

Did you find this information useful? Please send your suggestions and comments about the documentation to smsdocs@microsoft.com.