Checkpoints | Microsoft Systems Management Server 2.0 Administrators Companion (IT-Administrators Companion)

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If you've been reading carefully, you'll have encountered several notes and cautions describing situations that if not considered can result in strange and unusual things happening in your site. These administrative lapses might be called "gotchas" because of the sneaky way they have of jumping up to get you. Let's recap the most significant gotchas here.

Planning and Identifying Site Systems

First and foremost, be sure that your deployment strategy has identified which servers will serve as site systems, how many servers you may need, and which roles they will play. Your answers will depend on the size of your site; the number of clients, packages, advertisements, and so on involved; and the current state of your network and network traffic. The soundest approach is to test, track, and analyze. Use the tools available to learn how your site server and site systems will perform under different conditions.

Performance Monitor is an ideal Windows NT tool to assist you with this analysis on Windows NT servers. Use Network Monitor to track and analyze traffic generated between the site server and its site systems. Identify, wherever possible, those times when site traffic might take advantage of lighter traffic loads. As we delve more deeply into SMS processes such as inventory collection and package distribution, you'll learn how to identify and analyze network traffic.

Disk Space

The amount of disk space required for each type of site system has been identified in the section "Defining and Configuring Site Systems" earlier in this chapter. Be sure that the site systems you have in mind have adequate disk space to carry out their function and store their data. CAPs, for example, need space to store inventory data, discovery data, and status messages from clients, as well as package information, advertisements, site lists, and client configuration files. We know that CAPs need about 27 MB of disk space for installation, but you will need additional space for the client data and package and advertisement information. Of course, the number of clients you are managing and the number of packages and advertisements that you generate will affect the disk space requirements, but this quantity can—with some effort and resource analysis—be determined. Distribution points require as much disk space as each package you store. Again, with some calculation effort and forward planning, you can determine the amount of disk space needed.

Connection Accounts

Connection accounts were discussed in detail in the section "Site System Connection Accounts" earlier in this chapter. For Windows NT site servers, additional connection accounts beyond the default account that SMS creates or the SMS Service account are really not required unless you have specific security issues to address on specific site systems.

On the other hand, connection accounts for NetWare Bindery or NDS servers are not created by default, and they are most assuredly required in order for SMS components to be able to install the site system roles and collect data from these servers. NetWare servers support only the logon point, CAP, and distribution point site server roles. Recall from the section "Defining and Configuring Site Systems" that you must have installed some redirection service such as GSNW or the IntranetWare Client (necessary for accessing NDS containers) on the site server. Next, you must have already created the account on the NetWare server and assigned it the appropriate permissions. Admin or Supervisor equivalence will do, but you can apply only those permissions that are actually needed to provide a higher level of security.

MORE INFO
For the most current information about using SMS 2.0 in a NetWare environment, visit the Systems Management Server Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/smsmgmt.