Overview of the Deployment Process

There are two distinct phases to consider in any SMS 2003 deployment strategy:

• Planning

• Deployment

Planning

If you implement a deployment without first planning it, you can inadvertently cause inherent design problems, which can lead to costly downtime and can cause users to regard the system as unreliable. Also, if you do not plan properly, the inventory results that your organization uses for budgetary and financial decisions might not be valid.

Successfully implementing SMS requires detailed planning. It is important that you understand the planning process. When you prepare a project plan properly, your SMS deployment can be as simple as carrying out your plan. For this reason, you must allocate appropriate resources to the planning phase. You must thoroughly research, document, and test your project plan before you deploy SMS. Proper planning can help you ensure the greatest return on your investment. You should not rush to implement management solutions, such as SMS 2003.

It can be difficult to define and implement an SMS site structure unless you first consider and plan for your SMS client requirements. The planning requirements for a new installation of SMS 2003 differ somewhat from the planning requirements for an upgrade of an existing SMS 2.0 installation. Therefore, it is recommended that you proceed through the appropriate planning steps before you attempt to deploy an SMS site.

The following planning areas are discussed in this book:

• Preplanning

• Active Directory Planning

• Security Planning

• Discovery Planning

• Client Installation Planning

• Client Agent Settings Planning

• Site Planning

• Site System Planning

• Site Boundary Planning

• Backup and Recovery Planning

• Upgrading an Existing Installation of SMS 2.0

Perform the preplanning steps that are outlined in this book before you decide whether or how you will deploy SMS 2003. During the preplanning phase you collect information about your site that helps you identify the management needs of your organization, and you determine whether your organization, your servers, and your network meet SMS 2003 installation requirements.

Planning steps are recommended to help you plan the actual deployment and installation of your SMS site servers, site systems, and site hierarchy. Planning steps are also provided to help you deploy an upgrade of SMS 2.0 to SMS 2003.

This book provides you with planning sheets that you can use to collect information about your sites and to help you make decisions about how to configure your sites.

As shown in Figure 1.1, after completing this phase, you determine whether you will deploy SMS 2003 as a new installation or whether you will upgrade or remove an existing installation of SMS 2.0.

Figure 1. SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 1   Preplanning for SMS 2003 and choosing a deployment path

Deployment

There are two deployment paths that you can take: a new installation of SMS 2003 or an upgrade of an existing SMS 2.0 installation. There are two typical upgrade scenarios: an in-place upgrade or a side-by-side upgrade. These deployment paths are designed to be flexible. Except for certain explicit cases, you can apply them to any portion of your SMS hierarchy in addition to the hierarchy as a whole.

New deployment of SMS 2003

This scenario represents a new installation of SMS 2003 in an organization where no previous SMS deployment exists or where you plan to remove any previous installations of SMS. Use this scenario, if:

• You do not have to consider any existing SMS 2.0 hierarchy.

• You can develop and implement a new SMS 2003 site hierarchy.

It is still important to evaluate the existing environment properly and design the SMS hierarchy appropriately.

In-place upgrade of SMS 2003

This scenario represents an upgrade of an existing SMS 2.0 hierarchy. Use this scenario, if you plan to:

• Maintain the structure of the existing SMS hierarchy.

• Maintain the existing client access points (CAPs) to support Legacy Clients until you upgrade them to the Advanced Client, the existing distribution point roles, and the existing SMS site boundaries.

• Have SMS clients remain assigned to their current SMS sites.

In this scenario, you must consider whether a new SMS 2003 site can manage your current SMS client computers. It might be that SMS 2003 cannot support some of your existing client computers. In this case, you might choose to maintain an SMS 2.0 site indefinitely — called a holding site — to support those clients. Consequently, you must also be aware of any interoperability issues between the SMS 2.0 site and the SMS 2003 site that can affect your SMS hierarchy. Holding sites and interoperability issues are described later in this book.

Side-by-side upgrade of SMS 2003

This scenario represents an implementation of a new SMS 2003 hierarchy that you plan to migrate existing SMS clients to. You can choose to implement a side-by-side upgrade to:

• Use new or updated server hardware.

• Reflect changes that have been made in your organizational structure.

• Compartmentalize the usage of different SMS 2003 features, for example, managing mobile clients in an SMS site separate from that which is managing desktop clients.

• Take advantage of the increased scalability of SMS 2003 Advanced Client and reduce the overall number of SMS sites in your hierarchy.

• Maintain a functioning SMS site and managed clients while rolling out a new SMS infrastructure.