High Level Planning

  • Article

Plan your steps, and then document the results as you proceed from one step to the next. There are four general phases in an SMS deployment:

  • Site deployment

  • Site and hierarchy configuration

  • Client deployment

  • Feature configuration

In the site deployment phase, you install your SMS sites. In the site and hierarchy configuration phase, you configure each site and build a hierarchy by attaching sites. In the other phases, you deploy your clients and configure the SMS features you want to use, such as software metering. Feature configuration is not covered in this book. For information about configuring features, see the Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Operations Guide.

Table 10.1 shows the high level steps for deploying and configuring an SMS hierarchy and SMS clients. Depending on the complexity of your SMS hierarchy design, and the size of your computing environment, you might perform these steps in varying order in different areas of your organization.

Table 10.1 High Level Deployment and Configuration Steps

Phase

Steps

Site deployment

Install primary sites.

Install secondary sites.

Site and hierarchy configuration

Configure site security.

Configure tasks, alerts, and status system.

Configure site boundaries and roaming boundaries.

Prepare site system computers.

Assign site system roles.

Configure site communications.

Attach SMS sites.

Client deployment

Enable resource discovery and client installation methods.

Feature configuration

Enable and configure the SMS client agents.

You can approach deployment and configuration in different ways, depending on the size and complexity of your SMS hierarchy. Table 10.1 shows one approach. Be aware that you can customize the order of these steps differently for your environment. This is especially true for larger or more complex environments.

For example, you might choose to deploy all your SMS sites before deploying any SMS clients. Or, as you deploy each SMS site, you might deploy SMS clients to that site. Or, you might choose to deploy SMS clients when you have finished connecting the sites in each hierarchy branch. Make these decisions when you plan your deployment and configuration. The plan you design is dependent on many factors. Your pilot project can help you optimize the plan.

For More Information

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