Voice of reason! Exactly, the same things being said about SMS could have been said about Tivoli and several other "Frameworks".
If all that is wanted/needed is inventory, there is nothing bad about putting together a small scripted system to do it. It is targeted, it is easier to troubleshoot when it doesn't work, and you have full control over it. Even getting the agents out there is not difficult if you plan for it in your design, what SMS and other frameworks do for agent deployment is not rocket science and it doesn't all have to be in a home brew or "roll your own" solution immediately. Now the flip side of the coin.... What do want to do down the road? The point at which the frameworks start making sense is when you start doing all sorts of automation such as inventory and software delivery and this and that and some of the other. Then you don't have to invent new solutions for each. You could always build out your custom solution to be a framework but at that point, you have to weigh in how long it would take to do in some other framework that already exists. That is tough to do because certainly, with none of the big products is it usually a simple slap it out there and it works unless you have a tiny little configuration that probably can easily survive without it. I have said it before and I will say it again and again that MSFT's scaling often has issues, especially around management, there is a lot of if it works for one, then the admins should be able to figure out how to do it for thousands even if we don't make it very possible for them. Oh one of the big issues I tend to have with the massive frameworks (and monitoring systems). They all usually want to run with domain admin (or localsystem on every machine including DCs) rights, especially if they are automatically discovering and deploying themselves. This means several things, such as huge possible security hole and you can't delegate them off. It is another task that domain admins have to be in full control of. If you give someone else the permissions to run it, then you have just effectively made them domain admins as well. I find that unacceptable and would build every other solution from the ground up to avoid it until the vendors actually get it through their head, yes including MSFT, that people want truly secure systems. Again, this isn't an issue in small environments where the domain admin is already responsible for everything, but again, in those places, the frameworks have limited use and life is difficult but definitely possible without them so the need isn't as great as in a large deployment where delegation of support tasks is required. joe -- O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition - http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Darren Mar-Elia Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2006 1:05 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Asset Inventory (OT) "SMS is one of those products you get out of it what you put into it." Hehe, can't resist--yes, you put 50 dedicated admins into it and you have 50 dedicated admins that want to get out of it :) My experiences span SMS 1.x, 2.x and not so much with the latest version. I've also had lots of experience with a variety of other sw. distribution/inventory tools. If all you want is inventory, then I think SMS is overkill. Its overly complex and does require a lot of work to make it do what you want in an ongoing fashion. There are other strictly asset management or configuration management-based tools that do just that and do it well. Some that come to mind include Configuresoft, StealthBits, etc. Darren -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tim Sullivan Sent: Monday, May 01, 2006 9:52 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Asset Inventory (OT) SMS 2003 is light years different than 1.2 or even 2.0. Its certainly worth another evaluation, especially with feature packs like Operating System Deployment and Mobile Device management packs. SMS is one of those products you get out of it what you put into it. Tim -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Timo Ed Sent: Monday, May 01, 2006 11:36 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] Asset Inventory (OT) Brian, I cannot comment on the latest versions of SMS, but I can say that I was extremely unimpressed with SMS 1.2. The product was badly designed and didn't work. I assume its a lot better these days, but historically SMS was not a option worthy of consideration. In addition, I believe the licencing costs are considerably higher than many of the other options available. I recall small site installations costing over US$50K. Rgds, Tim On 5/2/06, Brian Desmond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm missing why nobody has mentioned SMS - www.microsoft.com/sms. <snip> List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
