Limiting Client Discovery

[kevfranklin]

My network has 450 pcs on it of which 100 are volatile (i.e In a 24 hour use manufacturing environment). I want to create an SMS Site that will discover all pcs EXCEPT the 100 volatile ones. Is there any way of doing this apart from creating a new subnet for them?? The network is a Windows 2000 Domain with primarily W2K and NT4 PCs.

 

[pwhitham]

Hi
Do you actually want the PCs not to be discovered or have the client installed ?
If you don't want to have thye PCs discovered I think there's no option but to create a different subnet, although I could be wrong.
If however you dont want the client installing, I install the client via the login script, which first checks for a file on the C drive. If the file exists, it skips the client installation, otherwise it installs. This easily prevents installation on specified PCs.

Hope this helps,
regards
Paul.

 

[RCafaro]

You can change your discovery settings and disable logon discovery, for example. This will prevent the volatile machines from being discovered.
Note that the only way to discover clients with logon discovery off is using Logon Installation (Client install via login script) or Network Discovery (which would scan the subnet for devices).
If you disable logon discovery but have users with the SMS login script login to the machine the client will be installed anyway. You should either remove the SMS login script for these users or use the file method described in the previous tip. There are more elaborate solutions using GPOs to achieve this filtering.

Regards,
Rodrigo