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Overview

Like its counterpart in SMS 2.0, the software metering feature of SMS 2003 gives you the ability to collect and monitor program usage on SMS client computers, including the users running the program, when the program started, and when it was stopped. A program is any executable file that can run in memory on the client computer, especially .EXE and .COM files. You can use this information to help determine how programs are used within an organization, whether and how programs are being used, and whether you’re in compliance with license agreements for the programs being run. You tell the clients what programs to meter by creating software metering rules that are copied down to each client.

Unlike its SMS 2.0 counterpart, however, software metering in SMS 2003 no longer requires the implementation of a software metering site system to cache metered data and store and balance program licenses. Instead, it uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to store software metering rules and collected data. Software metering no longer actively monitors for license usage. To facilitate viewing and analyzing the metered data, SMS 2003 provides specific software metering reports that can be used with the SMS Web reporting tool.

Software metering collects the following information about a program:

Software Metering Process Flow

Software metering in SMS 2003 is supported on SMS Legacy Clients and Advanced Clients. Two main components make up software metering—the Software Metering Client Agent and software metering rules. The rules represent the programs that you want to monitor on each client, and the agent is responsible for keeping the rules up to date on the client and collecting and reporting metered data back to the site.

Software metering rules are stored in the SMS database and copied to client access points (CAPs) (for Legacy Clients) and management points (for Advanced Clients). The rules are propagated to the SMS clients during the client agent’s next update cycle (by default, every two hours for Legacy Clients and every hour for Advanced Clients). Rules created at an SMS site higher up in the hierarchy can apply either to just that site or to that site and all its lower-level child sites.

When the program runs, the agent collects required information about the program, such as the filename, version, and size, when the program started and when it ended, and the client on which it’s running. The agent then uploads the data to the CAP or the management point on its next update cycle. If the client isn’t connected to the network, the data remains on the client and is uploaded the next time the client connects to the network.

Once the data has been uploaded to the appropriate site server, it’s added to the site database, and, if the rule was created at a higher-level parent site, the data is propagated to the higher-level SMS sites.



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