Microsoft Systems Management Server 2.0 Resource Guide (IT Professional)

In Microsoft Systems Management Server 2.0 Resource Guide, you'll find comprehensive information covering advance planning strategies to design and test SMS site hierarchies in your organization, troubleshooting SMS components and processes using detailed flowcharts, managing SMS in multilingual organizations, replacing SMS 1.2 Program Group Control (PGC) applications with SMS 2.0 shared applications on servers, creating and customizing IDMIF files and NOIDMIF files, determining hardware requirements, configuring remote SMS administrator consoles, and identifying SMS file types and directories.

Microsoft Systems Management Server 2.0 Resource Guide is a collection of tools that enable administrators using SMS 2 to perform a variety of tricks that they couldn't do with the software in its straight-from-the-box form, plus the documentation of those tools. If you wish you could do something with SMS but don't want to take the time to write your own code for the job, odds are high that you'll find a Resource Guide program (or a combination of programs) that helps your cause. The only real criticism of this book is that it exists at all: Microsoft should distribute these utilities with SMS in the first place.

The CD-ROM that accompanies the book contains several dozen utilities. Setup tools allow you to install SMS on a machine other than the site server, preload SMS software on a client-to-be, and perform query imports and exports (handy for backups). Administration tools allow you to load configuration data from text files, manage groups and collections, and perform diagnostics. Maintenance software helps you look at clients' Advertised Program Manager (APM) data, determine how much memory client processes are using, reassign client SMS identifiers, and delete locked (or in-use) client files. Other handy software helps administrators glean knowledge from logs, perform hardware inventories, distribute applications, and configure multiple network cards. --David Wall

Topics covered: Microsoft Systems Management Server 2 and the software Microsoft has released to improve its usefulness. Among the neatest SMS tools are a utility that removes all traces of a given client and some utilities for configuring groups and boundaries. The CD-ROM that ships with this book includes utilities for other BackOffice programs, including SQL Server 7, Exchange Server 5.5, and SNA Server 4.