Turning off SMS

[Chopsy666]

Hi,

I am a bit worried about network performance since i have had SMS 2003 running on our network, we are having slow network etc, but it is intermittent. Does someone know what would happen if i temporarily shut down the SMS server. will that make matters worse, e.g clients continually polling for management points etc, or messages of cant connect turning up on the users screens. I think it will be o.k but just want to be cautious.

Regards

 

[sencee]

You shouldn't see any difference, (well it won't be worse). Shutting the SMS server down will reduce the network traffic, or other than doing this...just have a good look over all your schedules, make sure you are not doing something silly like, requesting hardware or software inventory every 5/10 minutes, or that you don't have packages with long expiry dates and have recursive advertisements, this is a major problem, because nothing is updated, the clients just keep downloading any packages, regardless of whether they already have them (unless you set up some decent package/advertisement policies)

 

[Chopsy666]

Thanks For that Sencee,
I dont think ive done anything obvious as ive turned off Hardware/software inventory just incase. One thing i dont fully understand is when it says

Heartbeat discovery:
"If a client installation method is enabled, set this interval less than the client rediscovery period of the "clear install flag" site-maintenance task. This prevents needlessly reinstalling clients."

what is this clear install flag site-maintenance task?

All i know at present i have AD system Discovery set once a day at 11am (i find it odd that a machine needs to be on if the disocvery is through AD but that is what i read hence set during the morning when most machines are on)

AD user discovery set once a day at 7pm when most people have done home.

AD Directory System Group discovery set once a day at 7.30 pm

I have also then set Heartbeat discovery to once a week.

Regards

 

[sencee]

Bascially, when you install a SMS client, it is flagged in the database as being installed. If you at some point, uninstall the client, in the database (so in SMS outputs), it still shows the client as "installed". You can "clear install flags" and this will bascially update the database and refresh it. I think the actual task it's self wipes all these flags from every client, then a discovery method will detect which have clients installed on them the next time the schedule comes around.

If you have an updates client installation that you want to push out, simply running the "Install Client Software" push will not work, as this only installs the software on machines where the SMS Client Software is not installed...or at least where the database tells it, that it is not installed.

The hearbeat discovery is the action that actually compares the status of a client machine, and determins whether it has the client software installed, and therefore, whether it should (re)install the client software.

I think the default setting for clear flags is 90 days. if you say set this to 5 days....then every 5 days SMS will be told that there are no clients, then every 7 seven days, heartbeat will detect this and install it again, to your whole site/collection, whichever the setting was enabled for.

Does that make any sense....I babble sometimes.

 

[Chopsy666]

Thanks Sencee, that makes sense just fine. any ideas where i can change the default, not that i plan to, but just for informations sake.

regards

 

[sencee]

Of cause

I must correct myself, the default is 21 days, but I neglected to tell you that the default is set to "false" anyway, so it doesn't matter. So flags will NEVER be cleared.

TIP for finding procedures and options.
The clue is in wording in the warning...

"CLEAR INSTALL FLAG TASK"...this means that the event type is a TASK.

SiteHeirarchy > SiteDatabase > System Settings > System Maintanance > Tasks -> Clear Install Flags

 

[sencee]

Hope that helped.