Overview

  • Article

You can choose different combinations of discovery methods to locate resources. The discovery method you use determines the type of resources discovered and which SMS services and agents are used in the discovery process. A computer does not automatically become an SMS client through discovery. Depending on how you plan to use SMS, you can choose to perform discovery without performing installation, or vice versa.

There are advantages to initiating discovery but not client installation, or vice-versa. For example, if you run discovery while all client installation methods are disabled, SMS discovers resources on your network. Then, when you enable a client installation method in SMS, discovered Windows operating system computers are also installed as SMS clients.

Initiating Discovery Without Initiating Client Installation

The purpose of initiating discovery but not initiating client installation is to gather information about resources in your organization for planning purposes. For example, to refine your plan for SMS site boundaries, you can perform resource discovery to determine the number of computers on each subnet in your network. You can then use this information to determine the best way to install the clients. When you have configured the site boundaries, you can install SMS on client computers. The clients are assigned appropriately, and the client agents are installed.

You can accomplish this by using Network Discovery or Active Directory System Discovery to discover information about system resources on your entire network.

Important:

  • You should notify network administrators if you plan to use Network Discovery. This method can contact devices that other administrators might not expect or want to be contacted. You should let the administrators know that those activities are planned and ask whether they are acceptable.

Initiating Client Installation Without Initiating Discovery

In other situations, the advantage is in initiating client installation but not discovery. You run an SMS client installation method without first running a client discovery method. This is advantageous to SMS administrators who do not want to discover resources that they do not want SMS to manage. This type of installation without discovery can be done by using Group Policy or by initiating client installation in the logon script.

For the Advanced Client, you can install the SMS Advanced Client software on the computer without assigning the client to a site. In this scenario, discovery is not run at all. For more information, see Chapter 17, "Discovering Resources and Installing Clients."

Monitoring Discovery and Client Deployment

When you enable discovery and client installation methods, you must monitor their progress to ensure that:

  • Discovery and client installation methods are proceeding successfully.

  • Discovery and client installation methods are not proceeding too rapidly, possibly causing an excessive load on your network or servers.

  • Clients are being assigned to the appropriate SMS sites.

  • The correct client type is being installed on the appropriate computers.

  • The correct client agents are being installed on Legacy Clients.

The easiest way to monitor the success of the discovery and client installation methods is to examine the collections in the SMS Administrator console. Over time, the collections should become populated with SMS clients. By checking the properties for individual clients, you can ensure that they have the correct site assignment, client type, and client agents.

Collections are automatically updated on a routine schedule, but if you do not want to wait for the next automatic update, you should select a collection in the SMS Administrator console, click All Tasks in the Action menu, and then click Update Collection Membership. You should then click Refresh from the Action menu. You can obtain a count of the resources in a collection by clicking Show Count from the Action menu.

You can also monitor the progress of discovery and client installation methods by examining the status messages for relevant components under the Site Status node in the SMS Administrator console.

For More Information

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