Discovering Resources

Discovering resources is the first phase of the client deployment process. During this phase, SMS gathers information about resources in your organization's network and then stores that information in the SMS site database as discovery data records (DDRs). A resource is any object found by SMS. Resources can be computers (including mainframes and UNIX workstations), routers, printers, or user or group accounts.

Note:

• You can add additional resource types by using details included in the Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Software Development Kit, or Appendix C, "Scripting SMS Operations," in the Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Operations Guide.

The information that is gathered during discovery is limited compared to the data that the inventory feature can later gather. Discovery information includes data such as the name of a discovered resource, its operating system, and its IP address. Having discovery data in the SMS site database allows administrators to query the SMS site database for that data. Subsequently, administrators can include discovery data in reports and include discovered resources in collections. You cannot use any primary features of SMS, such as inventory or software distribution, on discovered resources.

Discovery Data Records

The goal of discovery is to locate and gather information about resources on your network. Although discovery methods behave in different ways and might discover different types of resources, they all gather information about objects on the network and generate information about those objects. When a resource is discovered, the discovery component generates a DDR and forwards it to the SMS site database. Secondary sites forward DDRs to their parent site.

A DDR is a set of information about the discovered resource. DDR properties depend on the type of resource that is discovered, and on the configuration of discovery methods in the site. For example, a DDR for a computer has a different set of properties than a DDR for a user account. A DDR for a computer contains resource properties such as the following:

• SMS unique identifier (GUID)

• NetBIOS name

• IP addresses

• IP subnets

• Operating system name and version

• Domain or workgroup

• Last logon user name

• Agent name (the discovery method that generated the DDR)

• Active Directory container

• Active Directory group

There are other DDR properties. If you have access to Collections in the SMS Administrator console, you can see the DDR properties for systems and users in the All Systems and All Users collections by viewing the properties of the resources.

The type of information that SMS gathers depends on the type of resource discovered. For example, some resources, such as printers, might not have the Operating system name and version property. The DDR data also varies depending on the discovery method that you use.

The operating system name returned by discovery might not be the official product name. The domain name is not the fully qualified domain name. For better data, use the comparable properties that are returned by SMS inventory collection.

SMS uses a GUID, if it is available in the DDRs, to match DDRs to existing resources in the SMS site database. For the system architectures (as seen in the All Systems collection), the GUID is the SMS Unique Identifier property. If the GUID is not available in the DDR, SMS uses key properties within DDRs to match incoming discovery information to existing resources. For the system architecture, the key properties are IP Addresses, AD Site Name, MAC Addresses, and NetBIOS Name. The DDR might not have all the key properties set, in which case SMS matches on only the key properties that are set. If a match is made, the existing resource data is updated. If a match is not made, a new resource record is created.

Discovery Methods

There are several discovery methods that you can use to discover resources. Your choice of discovery method depends primarily on the types of resources that exist in your organization.

SMS 2003 provides the following discovery methods, which you can enable and configure from the SMS Administrator console:

• Windows User Account Discovery

• Windows User Group Discovery

• Heartbeat Discovery

• Network Discovery

• Active Directory System Discovery

• Active Directory User Discovery

• Active Directory System Group Discovery

These discovery methods are described in detail later in this chapter.

• Other methods to discover resources and to generate DDRs are as follows:

  • SMS automatically discovers SMS site systems and site servers. Administrators have no control over this behavior. This generates discovery data for the site systems and can trigger their installation as SMS clients.

  • SMS automatically generates a DDR when it stores (in the SMS site database) inventory data from a client for which the SMS site database has no DDR. In this scenario SMS creates the DDR based on details included in the inventory data. Administrators have no control over this behavior.

  • The Manual Client Installation method always generates a DDR and can discover computers without installing the SMS client software on them. For more information about Manual Client Installation, see the "Manual Client Installation" section later in this chapter.

  • Writing scripts that generate DDRs. You can write a script that creates DDRs from sources such as spreadsheets, Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange directories, databases, and even some unconventional types of resources, such as printers. For more information about scripting, see Appendix C, "Scripting SMS Operations," in the MicrosoftSystems Management Server 2003 Operations Guide.

  • You can develop logon scripts that generate DDRs for the computers that log on to the domain.

Although all SMS discovery methods generate discovery data, the different methods discover different types of resources and serve different purposes, as described in the following sections.

Table 4.1 lists the different discovery methods, which resources they discover, and from where the discovery data is gathered.

Table 4.1 SMS Discovery Methods

For More Information

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