Using Systems Management Server to Analyze Your Network Infrastructure
Using Systems Management Server to Analyze Your Network Infrastructure |
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Windows 2000 includes the same programming interfaces and features that have been available in previous versions of Windows; however, improved features do not always behave in the same way. Compatibility issues are usually minimized by various programming standards, but not all applications have been developed in strict accordance to those standards. For these and similar reasons, some software that is designed for the various versions of Windows might not be compatible with Windows 2000.
The chapter "Testing Applications for Compatibility with Windows 2000"discusses the software compatibility issues in depth, and provides details on how to determine whether your applications are compatible with Windows 2000. However, you will still have two very large questions facing you: "Which software applications does your company use?" and "Which computers are they installed or used on?" SMS provides the answers to these questions.
You enable and use SMS software inventory much like SMS hardware inventory. The method that SMS uses to collect the information is quite different because it involves scanning each client computer's hard disk for files with a name extension of .exe. These files are then inspected for additional details, if they are available, and this information is reported to the SMS site servers. You can extend SMS software inventory by configuring SMS to find files with extensions other than .exe, such as .dll or .com.
Because SMS software inventory collects details on all executable programs on each computer, you can be confident that you can identify all software that is installed on your organization's computers. SMS software inventory also attempts to extract header data from each program. Header data is information about the software, and is included in the executable files. Header data is available in most recently developed programs, but all computers will include some older programs. From the extracted program header information, descriptive names are available, rather than the often cryptic program file names.
Table 8.2 lists several properties that you will need to work with data from SMS software inventory. The properties for software with header data are from the SMS_G_System_SoftwareProduct class. The properties for software without header data are from the SMS_G_System_UnknownFile class.
Table 8.2 Software Data
| Data | Software with Header Data | Software without Header Data |
|---|---|---|
| File Name | FileName | FileName |
| File Size | FileSize | FileSize |
| Product Name | ProductName | N/A |
| Product Version | ProductVersion | N/A |
| Product Language | ProductLanguage | N/A |
SMS software inventory can identify all of the software installed on computers, but it does not tell you which software is actually used. When software is no longer used, it is not necessary to incur the cost of upgrading those applications.
SMS software inventory can collect files from client computers. If you have many client computers with large files, this can impose quite a load on your network and on the disk space on your site servers. However, used sparingly, software inventory can be a powerful tool. For instance, you can run the Windows 2000 upgrade on Windows 95 or Windows 98 computers in such a way that only an upgrade report is created (Upgrade.txt in the Windows directory).
To create an upgrade report, you use the command Winnt32 /checkupgradeonly or an appropriate answer file, and procedures described in "Using Systems Management Server to Deploy Windows 2000"in this book. SMS software inventory can then collect this file for each computer and store the files centrally for review at your convenience. The upgrade reports might give suggestions for hardware or software issues that need to be resolved before attempting to upgrade the computers.
SMS has a feature, called software metering, that reports on actual software usage. Software metering reports the invocation of every program, and then records this data in the SMS site database. Programs that come with the operating system, such as Notepad, are often excluded from this data collection.
The chapter "Metering Software" in the Microsoft® Systems Management Server Administrator's Guide describes how to use SMS software metering, including how to create reports based on its data. Give particular consideration to using offline mode, which collects the same information but reports it on an infrequent basis. This greatly reduces the load on the network, clients, and servers.