Summary

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Software metering, the newest feature of SMS 2.0, is still being refined, but nevertheless it does offer the SMS administrator some powerful program tracking tools. Remember to install SMS 2.0 Service Pack 1 to really make it shine.

As you've seen, you can manage client software in two ways. You can simply meter the applications as they are run on the client and report usage data periodically to the software metering server. Or you can report program execution dynamically and check for license or other restrictions that may have been placed on a registered program.

Recorded usage data can be summarized, analyzed, and reported. Licenses can be automatically load-balanced across software metering servers within the local site as well as across SMS sites. You can track all programs, exclude programs, or register specific programs with specific properties and policies.

In this part of the book, we have examined various ways to manage client applications. The package distribution process showed us how we can remotely install programs on our SMS clients and how the package distribution process can be maximized through the use of collections. With the SMS Installer, we can fully script our packages to require little or no user input during the package's execution. In this chapter, we have seen how to monitor the usage of client applications. In Part IV, we'll explore various ways to retrieve and present information from the SMS database, as well as site database maintenance and recovery.