Looking to the Future

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It is important to remember that SMS 2.0 does not support Windows 2000 Active Directory or Group Policy. A Windows 2000 server with Active Directory installed cannot be installed as an SMS 2.0 site server—only Windows 2000 servers without Active Directory can be site servers. However, you can expect to see this and other functionality added in future releases of SMS. In the near future, it is reasonable to anticipate another service pack release that will continue to stabilize and enhance the current version of SMS 2.0. Several of the "gotchas" mentioned in this book may well be addressed through a future service pack.

NOTE

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Site servers that are installed on Windows 2000 servers do not support assigning site system roles to Novell NetWare NDS servers.

You can also expect at least two more versions of SMS to appear in the not-too-distant future. Since these versions are already under development, it would probably not be prudent to speculate on what they might contain in the way of feature sets or functionality; perhaps support for clients running non-Windows operating systems will be added.

Certainly as Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is refined, the list of SMS-manageable objects will grow. Research is underway within the microcomputer industry to develop WMI-aware computer systems. SMS could potentially take advantage of that to provide management functionality to the hardware level. We can be sure that current functionality will continue to be enhanced and that performance—already greatly improved over SMS 1.2—will continue to be enhanced as well.

Additionally, you can expect future versions of SMS to integrate more closely with Windows 2000, providing full support and synergy with IntelliMirror technology, including Active Directory and Group Policy. Microsoft is most definitely committed to this product, as this current version clearly demonstrates. Those of you who previously supported an SMS 1.2 environment can best appreciate this commitment.