Defining Collections

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Although our primary focus here is on the use of collections in the package distribution process, collections have many other uses. Collections are groups of SMS resources and can consist not only of computers, but also of Microsoft Windows NT users and user groups, as well as any resources discovered through the Network Discovery method, as we discussed in Chapter 7. Package programs can be advertised to collections that consist of users, user groups, or computers. Computer collections, however, are the starting point for performing many client management tasks. For example, the Remote Tools, Resource Explorer, and Event to Trap Translator configurations for each client are initiated by selecting the client through a collection. For Windows NT client computers, you can also initiate remote diagnostics such as viewing a client's Event Viewer or Windows NT Diagnostics utility through the client entry in a collection.

CAUTION

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Collections represent discovered resources. The computer resources that are discovered and displayed in a collection may not actually be installed as SMS clients. If a client has not been installed and the appropriate client component has not been enabled, you will not be able to initiate a Remote Tools session, collect inventory, and so on, even though the discovery data record (DDR) exists.

We know that if a computer is discovered but not installed as an SMS client, that computer cannot be the recipient of an advertisement since the Advertised Programs Client Agent (also sometimes referred to as the Advertised Programs Agent) is an SMS client component. On the other hand, a discovered Windows NT user obviously cannot be installed as an SMS client, since there is no equivalent user installation method. However, a discovered user can be the recipient of an advertisement when that user is logged on at an SMS client. For example, suppose that the auditing department of a company has developed a spreadsheet that their auditors use when auditing other departments. If SMS has discovered the auditors' user accounts, those user accounts can be grouped into a collection called Auditors. The audit spreadsheet can then be advertised to the Auditors collection and would subsequently be available to each auditor at whatever SMS client they log on to, in whatever department they are visiting.

In many ways, collections are similar to Windows NT global groups. You use Windows NT groups to organize users into easily managed units. Groups are used to assign access permissions to Windows NT resources such as printers, folders, files, and shares. When a new user joins a group, that user automatically inherits all the permissions assigned to that group.

The same concept applies to SMS collections. You use collections to organize your SMS discovered resources into manageable units. For example, suppose you have installed 1000 clients as SMS clients. These clients will appear as part of the All Systems collection in the SMS Administrator Console. If each of these clients belongs to a different business unit or department within your organization and you need to send these computers packages based on their affiliation with their business unit or department, you could create a collection for each business unit or department and add each client to the appropriate collection. Your clients are now grouped into manageable units to which you can easily target packages.

Collections can contain subcollections to give the SMS administrator more flexibility (or more headaches, depending on your point of view). Subcollections work in much the same way as nested groups in Windows NT. Actions performed on a main collection can also be performed on its subcollections. The most common use for subcollections is in connection with advertisements. Package programs are advertised to collections, but you can also advertise to a collection's subcollections.

Subcollections are not considered to be members of the collection that contains them. Think of subcollections more as a convenient way to link several different collections so that they can be treated as one unit. Membership rules are unique for each subcollection and don't affect any other collection. We'll look at collection membership in the next section.

Collection Membership

Collection membership rules can be either direct or query-based. Direct membership is a manual membership method, meaning that you define which resources are to be members of the collection. You are also responsible for maintaining the collection over time. If, for example, computers are added or removed from the business group or department, you will need to add or remove those computers from their corresponding collections.

Query-based membership, on the other hand, is more dynamic in nature. You define the rules by which the collection membership is established, and then SMS keeps the collection up-to-date by periodically rerunning the query. For example, suppose your company standard for naming computers is to include a business unit or departmental code—say, all computers in the finance department are named FIN203-PCx, where x is a value that's incremented each time a new computer name is needed. You could create a collection named Finance whose membership rule is based on a query that searches the database for all computers whose names begin with FIN203. SMS would automatically populate the collections with the appropriate computers. If computers are added or removed from the finance department, the collection would be updated automatically when the collection query was next executed.

As you can see, query-based collections are generally more practical and efficient than those based on direct-membership rules.

REAL WORLD  Automating Collections and Packages

Let's build on our query-based collection example, in which all computers in the finance department are named FIN203-PCx and a Finance collection has been created whose membership rule is based on a query that searches the database for all computers whose names begin with FIN203. Since package programs are always advertised to collections, all members of the Finance collection would receive any advertisement to that collection. If computers are added or removed from the finance department, the next time the Finance collection is (automatically) updated, this change will be reflected to the collection and any new computers that were added to the collection will receive advertisements made to the collection. Similarly, if a computer has been removed from the Finance collection, that computer will no longer receive any advertisements made to the collection.

This process makes it easier for the SMS administrator to automate some client management tasks, such as applying virus updates. Suppose your advertisement is to copy a new virus update to each client in the finance department once a month. You already have the Finance collection, so all you need to do is create a recurring advertisement (you'll learn how to do this in Chapter 12) that copies a new virus update file to the clients on a specified day of each month.

Working together, the advertisement and the collection ensure that all computers in the finance department will receive the virus update file once a month. If new computers are added to the finance department, the next time the collection is automatically updated they will automatically receive the same advertisement for the virus update file that every other member of the Finance collection will receive. Similarly, if a computer is moved to another department, the next time the collection is automatically updated that computer will no longer receive advertisements for the virus update. The only administrative task that you need to worry about is obtaining the virus update file once a month and making it available to the advertised package.

Predefined Collections

As mentioned, collections represent discovered resources that have not necessarily been installed as SMS clients. For example, Windows NT users and user groups can be discovered as resources for an SMS site and the discovered users and user groups are automatically made members of the All Users and All User Groups collections—two examples of predefined collections.

Collections are used to group resources into more easily managed units. When you install SMS 2.0, twelve default collections are created. These default collections are described in Table 11-1.

Table 11-1. Default collections created during SMS site server installation

Collection	Description
All Systems	Displays all computers and IP-addressable resources discovered through any discovery method except Windows NT User Account Discovery and Windows NT User Group Discovery
All User Groups	Displays all Windows NT users discovered through the Windows NT User Group Discovery method
All Users	Displays all Windows NT users discovered through the Windows NT User Account Discovery method
All Windows 3.1 Systems	Displays all discovered computers running the Microsoft Windows 3.1 operating system
All Windows 95 Systems	Displays all discovered computers running the Windows 95 operating system
All Windows 98 Systems	Displays all discovered computers running the Windows 98 operating system
All Windows For Workgroups Systems	Displays all discovered computers running the Windows for Workgroups operating system
All Windows NT Server Systems	Displays all discovered server computers running the Windows NT Server 3.51 or 4.0 or Windows 2000 operating system
All Windows NT Systems	Displays all discovered server or workstation computers running the Windows NT operating system
All Windows NT Workstation 3.51 Systems	Displays all discovered computers running the Windows NT Workstation 3.51 operating system
All Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Systems	Displays all discovered computers running the Windows NT Workstation 4.0 operating system
All Windows NT Workstation Systems	Displays all discovered workstation computers running the Windows NT Workstation 3.51 or 4.0 or Windows 2000 operating system

As you can see, these default collections are designed to group resources by operating system. The collections can be used as targets for receiving advertisements. They are updated once per hour by default, but you can change that frequency by clicking the Schedule button on the Membership Rules tab in the collection's Properties window, as we'll see in the section "Creating a Query-Based Collection" later in this chapter. Note that you can manage the default collections only from the central site. They can't be modified from child sites.