What Is Systems Management Server 2003?

The computing industry has undergone many changes since the days of UNIVAC mainframes. In the early 1980s the desktop computer as a viable business tool was relatively new. In fact, typical corporate discussions at the time centered around issues such as whether to purchase a desktop computer with a 10 MB disk drive at an additional cost of $1,700 because “users will just never need that much space.”

Since that time, the desktop computer as a productivity tool has become a necessity in most organizations as well as in schools and at home. The need to provide processing power at the user’s fingertips is a foregone conclusion. As a result, desktop computing has grown into a major industry and, consequently, a potentially huge administration headache. Desktop computer users can be territorial about their systems and the applications used. It’s not unheard of to have an IS group that supports a user running three different word-processing programs in several versions because that user is unwilling to risk converting the documents to a single word-processing version. On the other end of the spectrum, more businesses are taking advantage of tools like SMS, Windows Installer Service, and Active Directory Group Policies to provide their users with a standard desktop that can not only be centrally maintained but also can’t be modified at all by the user. Both of these scenarios exemplify the fact that supporting multiple desktop computers installed with a variety of program applications can be a challenge for even the best-equipped and best-funded IS support groups.

In addition to application support, IS groups often provide hardware support for their organization’s users. This too can be a daunting prospect when the install base of computers is in the thousands or tens of thousands, deployed within different departmental, geographic, or international locations. It’s not always practical—or even possible—to physically access every computer in an organization.

Many IS managers have acknowledged the need to provide standards for desktop computing and have begun to look for and to implement some kind of centralized desktop management system. IS support groups need to be able to respond actively and proactively to implement and update software on client systems and to respond to their users’ requests for assistance as quickly, effectively, and consistently as possible. IS support groups should be able to perform as much user desktop management as possible while sitting at their own desktop computers. The key to effective remote desktop management is to provide a reliable set of remote management tools that enable an IS support group to be as effective as if they had actually laid hands on the user’s desktop.

Microsoft has long recognized this need and has responded by providing tools to assist IS groups in centralizing desktop management. These tools include the use of Active Directory Group Policies to provide standard desktop environment settings and registry values. Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2000 offers a server-based means of monitoring server performance remotely and responding to selected events appropriately—for example, restarting a service remotely if that service stops unexpectedly. Microsoft Application Center 2000 is designed to support the development and implementation of Web-based applications by using a cluster of servers that can serve the same elements of those applications (Web pages, COM+ components) to appropriate clients in the network. Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) services provide a robust schema for managing desktop configurations from a central location.

SMS 2003 is a powerful management product that offers a newly enriched set of desktop management features, with the capability of leveraging Active Directory. SMS 2003, together with the other client management solutions that Microsoft offers, provides IS managers with perhaps their most effective set of centralized management tools to date. With SMS 2003, you’ll be able to remotely diagnose and troubleshoot desktop systems, install applications, and manage software.

With these general specifications in mind, let’s take a closer look at the various features that SMS 2003 offers.