Overview of the Deployment Process

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The Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Concepts, Planning, and Deployment Guide stresses the importance of developing a thorough and complete strategy for deploying SMS 2003 in your organization. The information in this chapter can facilitate the development of such a strategy. The scenarios in this chapter are meant to be adaptable to the unique needs of your organization instead of being a prescribed method that fits every organizational model. You should use the scenarios in this chapter as guidelines for developing your own implementation strategy. For example, you might choose to implement a side-by-side upgrade of SMS 2003 at the central site level, and implement in-place upgrades at specific child sites.

This chapter provides you with a roadmap for developing a deployment plan for your SMS 2003 sites by offering a prescriptive guide using a flowchart model built around three principal deployment scenarios. In addition, this chapter directs you to the relevant conceptual, planning, and operational material that exists in other SMS 2003 documentation. Each flowchart includes action items for you, such as reading a specific resource topic or carrying out a task. The deployment scenarios 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.

The three principal deployment scenarios are:

  • New deployment of SMS 2003

  • In-place upgrade of SMS 2003

  • Side-by-side upgrade of SMS 2003

New deployment of SMS 2003 This scenario represents a fresh installation of SMS 2003 in an organization where no previous SMS installation exists, or where you plan to remove any previous installations of SMS. In this scenario, you do not need to consider any existing SMS 2.0 hierarchy and can develop and implement a new SMS 2003 site hierarchy. It is still important to properly evaluate the existing environment and design the SMS hierarchy appropriately.

In-place upgrade of SMS 2003 This scenario represents an upgrade of an existing SMS 2.0 hierarchy. In this scenario, you plan to maintain the existing SMS hierarchy, the existing CAP and distribution point roles, and the existing SMS site boundaries. SMS clients remain assigned to their current SMS sites. In this scenario, you need to 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 need also to 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 chapter.

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 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.

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