SMS Upgrade

[AkaLazlo]

I work for a company which currently uses SMS 1.2 to distribute data to their clients and uses the help desk functionality to perform maintenance on the machines.
Faith in the system is poor (reliability up to now has been patchy - no pun intended) and many distribution tasks are still pushed out using batch files. Additionally the system has poor support for distributing OS upgrades, application upgrades and hotfixes to the many Microsoft vulnerabilities which seem to be surfacing at an ever increasing rate.
I would like to propose an upgrade but thanks to work that has been carried out previously many of the managers here see an upgrade to SMS 2.0 as the next step (many hours were spent 1-2 years ago proposing this and they don't want to see this as wasted time). My instinct is to go with the latest version, SMS 2003, and I am trying to put forward a business case highlighting the pros and cons of each version.

Can anyone give me their personal views if they have been involved in a similar situation or point me towards resources on the net so I can constructively put my business case together.

Any advice would be gratefully appreciated.

 

[tbrennans]

I couldnt see going to anything but 2003 at this point. 2003 requires less hardware, it covers mobile users better, the clients are smaller, and to be honest, your pretty much going to start from scratch either way you go so why install something that was made 5-6 years ago when you can get the latest. Cost wise they are about the same but ultimately you could end up spending less on new hardware.

Tim B

 

[crobin1]

What OS are your clients running? Several older clients, including Windows 95 and NT 4 prior to SP6 are not supported in any fashion with SMS 2003. If you still have those types of clients and need to manage them, then you either need to upgrade to 2.0, or run a mixture of 2.0 and 2003.

We just implemented 2003 here, choosing to ignore the 100 or so Windows 95 PCs we still have (less than 10% of our client base).

 

[mnt25]

Hmmm the clients supported with SMS 2003 vary but overall you will be still be able to support legacy operating systems as long as you don't mind using the standard client. The new client with SMS 2003 is the advanced client (strongly PREFER). You will need the standard client for anything 2000 and below. The standard client will be required for the following: Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows NT® 4.0 Workstation, SP6a or later, Windows NT 4.0 Server, SP6a or later, Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition, SP6a or later.

HTH,
-Matt

 

[AkaLazlo]

Thanks for your comments guys, much appreciated.

The clients are either Windows NT4 Workstation and Server (SP6a) or Windows 2000 SP4 so looks like a straight-down-the-middle split between the standard/advanced clients.

All I need now is to compile what management would see as a comprehensive business case stressing the advantages of 2003 and I'm on the home stretch.... Any volunteers? ;o)

 

[vtjo]

The client piece is much better in 2003 - less bandwidth, easier to install, fewer running processes - although we see a little increase in RAM usage. The Software Updates are more fully integrated into the admin console in SMS 2003 and there is a little more flexibility with scheduling in 2003.