Collections and the SMS Site Hierarchy

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Because the manner in which collections are handled within an SMS site hierarchy can be confusing, let's take a brief look at this topic. Collections created at a parent site will be propagated to that parent's child sites. However, the configurations of such collections will be locked to the child site's SMS administrator. As shown in Figure 11-30, a small lock icon appears next to these collections in the SMS Administrator Console showing that the collections are locked and can't be modified. The lock feature is by design. Collections created at the parent site can be modified only at the parent site. Child sites that receive these collections will evaluate them and populate them based on their SMS database, if they are also primary sites. All the members of a locked collection can be deleted by right-clicking the locked collection and choosing Delete Special from the context menu. However, if the deleted members are still valid at the parent site, they will reappear the next time the collection is evaluated and updated.

Figure 11-30. Sample locked collections in the SMS Administrator Console.

Child sites can create their own collections. These collections are fully manageable by the child site's SMS administrator and are not forwarded back up to the parent site. They will be propagated to their child sites and of course will be locked at the child sites.

Because secondary child sites do not maintain an SMS database of their own, their collections will be created and maintained at their parent sites. The secondary child sites will receive only the list of collection members that belong to their secondary site.

NOTE

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If a collection hasn't been updated for a week, SMS will automatically send the entire collection from a primary site to its child sites to synchronize the collections.