Overview
A major
challenge for IT administrators faced with managing their
technology infrastructure is figuring out which tool is best for
which job. With MOM, SMS, and WSUS and Microsoft Update, it is
important for the administrator to understand the features of each
tool and to understand how the tools work together. In addition,
where there is some overlap in functionality between the tools the
administrator needs to understand the benefits of using one tool
over another. In this chapter, we cover the following:
-
MOM: A solution for operations management
-
SMS: A software deployment and management
solution
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WSUS: Update services for decentralized
environments
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MOM, SMS, and WSUS
You get a functional overview of MOM, SMS, and WSUS
and the Microsoft Update components. You compare the products,
understand how they fit together, and review criteria to help you
decide when to use which of the products.
To get started, let's describe what each
product is designed to do. MOM 2005 is a solution to enable
operations management that provides event and performance
management, proactive monitoring and alerting, reporting and trend
analysis, and system-specific knowledge and tasks to improve the
manageability of your servers and applications. While MOM 2005 is
primarily focused on managing Windows-based servers, there are
third-party solutions that enable you to manage server applications
and services running on other platforms as well. SMS 2003 enables
you to manage client computers and servers within your
organization, including tasks such as troubleshooting, software
asset management, software distribution, software updates,
reporting, and many others. WSUS enables IT administrators to
deploy the latest product updates to Windows Server 2000, Windows
Server 2003, and Windows XP operating systems. By using WSUS,
administrators can fully manage the distribution of updates that are released through
Microsoft Update to computers in their network. When you look at
the descriptions for each product, there is some overlap
conceptually. As we drill into the details, the distinction will be
much more clear. We'll start with MOM 2005 and how it supports
operations management functions.