Client Deployment
Turning computers into managed SMS clients is referred to as client deployment. Your organization might have many hundreds or thousands of computers and other resources that you plan to manage using SMS. Manually deploying SMS on such a large number of computers could be prohibitively difficult. However, SMS supports several techniques to automate most of that process.
SMS client deployment consists of the following phases:
Discovering resources - locating computers and other types of resources on the network.
Installing SMS client software - installing core SMS client components on supported platforms for both client types and installing client agents on Advanced Clients.
Assigning clients to sites - evaluating which SMS site the computer should be assigned to, if any.
Installing client agents - installing the client agent software on Legacy Clients.
On the Advanced Client, the client agents are always installed at the same time that the core SMS client components are installed (aside from the Remote Control Agent and drivers that can be installed at a later time). You can configure the Advanced Clients to be automatically assigned to a site at that time or the client can be manually assigned to a site at another time.
On the Legacy Client, the client is always assigned to a site during the client installation phase, and the client agents are always installed after the client is assigned to a site.
You can deploy each client type by using different combinations of discovery and installation techniques. While planning SMS deployment, you must also carefully consider which client type to deploy and which deployment techniques to use. Concepts of the different client deployment techniques are described in this chapter. For information about strategies for client deployment, see Chapter 10, "Planning Your SMS Deployment and Configuration."
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