Assigning Clients to new site (SMS 2003)

[ronifly]

ok, I am a very new beginner at SMS 2003. I am attending my first class in 2 weeks but in the meantime....I am trying to figure out how I can manually change a clients site?? Environment here is obviously 1 primary site with 15 secondary sites all across US. AD environment with AD System Discovery (should I have user discovery enabled as well?) I apologize for the lack of knowledge on my end.
Thank you for any help.

 

[tbrennans]

Since you only have one primary site, every client will belong to that as secondary sites dont have clients

 

[ronifly]

But I thought that was one of the reasons for a Secondary Site? That a secondary site is also able to manage where it's local clients get updates/packages versus getting all packages from the Primary Site.

So if my primary site is in Pa and my secondary site is in Ca, all clients in Ca will receive all packages from Pa no matter what? I thought that secondary site would receive packages from primary site and then secondary site would be in charge of deploying packages to local clients?

thank you

 

[tbrennans]

No they recieve packages from your secondary if they are setup to do so, its just that all the policies will come from your primary site in PA, and only primary sites can have clients assigned to them.

If you want to make sure they get the packages from the local secondary, set them up as a protected distribution points. (and probably as proxy management points if you want to control your clients communications to the primary site.

 

[tbrennans]

And of course the secondaries would have the boundaries of their sites or subnets listed on them.

 

[ncotton]

The secondary site role is more of a traffic manager or organisation supervisor, as the 2nd-ary site server just manages through put to machine "under its jurisdiction", however, the clients are still only ASSIGNED to primary sites.

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[ronifly]

ok, that makes sense for sure and that's what I understand the 2nd-ary sites to be.....a traffic manager to the primary. So let me ask this....if I go to any collection, all site codes are equal to the primary site...is this ok? How can I verify that a client located at a secondary site is getting their packages from the secondary site versus the primary site?

thank you

 

[ncotton]

Have you enabled your 2site to be a protected distribution point?

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[ronifly]

How do I check that? It may be but I forget where that setting is. Can you tell I've been thrown in the fire? I just started a new job and my main task is SMS, I come from an Altiris environemnt. So the SMS lingo is new to me.

 

[ronifly]

Oh I think I just found it....under the 2ndary site's system propery, Distribution Tab-Use this siste system as a Dist. Point IS checked as well as BITS. BUT, Enable as a protected Dist. point is NOT checked. What will this allow?

 

[ncotton]

Site Heirarchy > Site XXX > Site Settings > Site Systems > Open the properties for the secondary site server machine > Distribution Point tab and CHECK"Use this site system as a distribution point", "Enable Background Intelligent File Transfer Service" and "Enable as a protected distribution point"

If you have lots of clients under the secondary site, to minimise the bandwidth over the WAN, between the 2 to prim site, you might want to isntall a proxy management point on the 2site. However, if you dont have many, enabling a PMP may INCREASE network traffic cause of all the summary and header information that is returned concerning all the inventroy and ddr returned.

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[ronifly]

Well, there are 15 Secondary sites under primary. Each 2ndary site having it's own site server of course. Do I want to enable Protected Dist. Point for each of these locations?

 

[ncotton]

If you want them to push out the packages from them

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[ronifly]

Great, I do so I will go into each one and set them up accordingly. I am currently reading thru your "Installing SMS" doc that you sent me yesterday. Can you or anyone out there recommend a good beginner book for me?

Thanks again
Ron

 

[ncotton]

I dont think there really is a beginner book. There is so much that you can do, so much you will and so much you wont do with SMS. You only need to know about the things you need to do at this moment in time...then build up your "knowledge toolkit" as you expand site and functions.

There isn't really anything that you can read from start to finish and say..right, I know what I'm doing. It's a matter of trial and error, and practicing most of the time, or reading advice on a particular issue.

Best bet, get the Microsoft Systems Managemener Server 2003 guide from MSPress. And get your self a few machines in a test environment. Make sure you know what you're doing with a configuration before pushing it to your operational systems.

My "guide" is nothing but a step by step for getting it up and running, and very basics about what each step is doing. All that really exists are "guides", kind of walk throughs, rather than accademic study texts about processing, it is all broken down and applied in the texts that are available. So rather than a "beginner" book. Get the Administratocs guide, and just get good at searching for your information.

It's a better skill to be able to quicky find answers with material, books, papers, internet, forums, than it is to know all these correct clicks. If you are skilled at configuring a system, but have no idea about the best methods for searhcing for solutions to problems, it will take you alot longer to complete than someone who can sucessfully diagnose and research problems.

Just my 2pence worth.

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[ronifly]

Sounds good - I just ordered that book.

Here's another question for whomever....
I went into All Systems Collections and deleted a known pingable system. I am trying to test the "Heartbeat" and "AD Group" discovery. HB is set for 1hr interval and AD is set for 1 day interval. Both timed intervals have passed and I still don't see the deleted system re-populate back into the All Systems Collections.

Any Ideas?
thank you sir

 

[ncotton]

Right click on the collection - All Actions > Update Collection Membership > check "update sub colls" > OK > right click in the collection pane (where the sysems are), and refresh

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[ronifly]

OK, it's a new day and either the Heartbeat or AD re-discovered this users system. This user now shows up in the "All Systems" collection. I have right clicked on this user to manually push the sms client to it being that we don't have auto install enabled. I wait about 30 mins., do an "All Tasks", Update collection, Refresh but this client still comes back with Client (No) and Assinged (YES). Why won't the client install even with a manual push?

Thank you
ron

 

[ncotton]

have you actually checked the client physically, to see if the client has installed?

As in Control Panel > Does "Systems Management" tool exist.

It wont show up till the Heartbeat has run again. and you have again...updated your collection and refreshed your systems list.

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant