Enhanced Software Distribution
SMS 2003's Advanced Client and BITS significantly improves the software-distribution process compared to that in SMS 2.0. You can use the Advanced Client and BITS to download all source files for a particular installation to a local client cache before installation begins. This practice can increase the success rate of software distributions because an interrupted download process can be later resumed without causing the subsequent application installation to fail.
SMS 2003's software-distribution process also provides a tremendous amount of flexibility in how you distribute programs. You can run application installations, scripts, or batch files for a set of computers, users, or groups.
New Support for Native Remote Tools
As we mentioned previously, SMS Remote Tools consists of an SMS Management Console component and the Remote Tools Client Agent. You can use the console component to access the Remote Tools Client Agent and other Windows-based remote-management technologies, such as Remote Assistance, Remote Desktop, and Terminal Services.
Although the remote control of a client computer is a core feature of SMS Remote Tools, it's not the only feature. You can also remotely reboot, transfer files, execute applications, and perform client diagnostics (e.g., perform a ping test against an SMS client computer).
SMS 2003 lets you use the SMS Management Console to launch the SMS Remote Tools and manage the remote tools natively found in client computers running Windows 2003 and Windows XP. (SMS 2.0 supports these capabilities; however, in SMS 2003, these capabilities are present by default.) As Table 2 shows, the native remote tools supported varies by the Windows OS. If you have clients running an OS that doesn't have any native remote tools, you can install the Remote Tools Client Agent and use the SMS Management Console to launch and manage the installed remote tools. You can skip the Remote Tools Client Agent installation if your clients are running OSs that have native remote tools and you want to use those tools exclusively.
Software Metering Makeover
SMS 2003's software metering bears no resemblance to its counterpart in SMS 2.0—a welcomed improvement. Microsoft completely rewrote the software-metering program so that it fully integrates with the SMS architecture. The software-metering program's sole purpose is to monitor application use; it isn't intended to prohibit software use. Software metering provides you with data about which applications are in use, when they're in use, and by whom. By combining this data with software-inventory data, you can identify installed but unused applications. This information can lead to reducing the number of software licenses, which might save your organization a significant amount of money.
More Web Reports
SMS 2003 provides even more canned Web Reports than its predecessor. SMS 2003 ships with more than 150 Web Reports. The reports use Active Server Pages (ASP) to execute SQL queries against the database and display the results in table or graph format. The reports can be copied to the clipboard, emailed, printed, saved to Favorites, or saved as a comma-separated value (CVS) file. You can also create dashboards that tie multiple reports to a grid.
SMS 2003's Web Reports are arranged in categories such as Hardware, SMS Site, Software, Software Distribution, Software Metering, and Status Messages. Some of the more useful reports include the Count reports in the Hardware category. With this report type, you can quickly sort and count computers by metrics such as disk size or processor speed, as Figure 2 shows.
Another helpful report counts all instances of software registered with the Control Panel Add or Remove Programs applet. This report lets you see all the software in an environment and the count of each product. However, note that the Add or Remove Programs applet shows only some of the installed software programs because not all programs register with this applet. In the Software Distribution category, the Status of a specific advertisement report shows you the percentage of clients that received a distributed application and the percentage of clients that installed the application successfully.
Enhanced Patch Management Add-On
SMS 2003's asset-management and software-distribution features make it an ideal tool for managing software updates. To further augment this capability, Microsoft released the Systems Management Server 2003 Software Update Scanning Tools. This suite of tools contains the Microsoft Office Inventory Tool, the Security Update Inventory Tool, and the Distributed Software Update Wizard. These tools collect patch information about all security vulnerabilities in a Windows environment and deploy fixes. The resulting inventory shows installed patches and patches that you should apply to each SMS client. You can then use the Distributed Software Update Wizard to deploy any required security patches within the SMS software-distribution framework.
You can download this tool set from the Microsoft Download Center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=88723540-2093-4276-910e-9ed1d3ae4a5e&displaylang=en. For other SMS 2003 downloads and a wealth of useful information about SMS, visit the SMS Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/smserver.
New Feature and Client Packs
The idea of adding extra features to SMS through feature packs and client packs began with SMS 2.0 and continues in SMS 2003. For SMS 2003, Microsoft currently offers the SMS 2003 Administration Feature Pack, which lets you perform site administration tasks more efficiently, and the SMS 2003 Advanced Client for Windows XP Embedded, which lets you manage Windows XP Embedded (XPe) client devices with SMS 2003.
