heres my SMS questions

[IBMan]

Ok so i was on the microsoft website, which says that you can use SMS with SQL even if you don't have or use AD, I'd prefer not to use AD at all because its too much of a pain right now unless someone can dumb down some details for me to use it JUST for this, but it says i cant connect to a site, which i need for SMS to work, but you need AD to find a site, so then how do i use SMS without AD?

 

[Win2kpatcher]

What I have found in my recent deployment is that AD is used primarily for easy discovery of all your systems in the building. I suppose if you didnt do it this way you would have to manually enter each entry? Perhaps Inaris can eleborate on that.

You can easily use AD for discovery only as that is what I am doing. What is your env like? Do you have enough priveleges on your network to access a domain controller? If you can you can bring up the sites and services console then look up the site which you want to deploy SMS to. What kind of error are you getting?

Yes SQL is a must for SMS which will hold your database.

 

[IBMan]

well..surprisingly enough, i think i got AD working, i just have to figure out some more about it..hehe, got my laptop to connect to a domain rather than locally....this isnt required is it? o boy if it is thats gonna suck. o well, i'll figger it out, the error i was getting is because i didn't have a site, SMS couldn't connect to a site because the path i gave...wasnt going to any site, so now that I have a site hopefully setup I can work with that.

 

[Win2kpatcher]

Ohh yea for sure you need a site setup in AD. I would join your SMS server to your main domain personally. It will be much easier for you down the line. How is everything else going for you? I am starting to play around some more with packages/advertisements.

 

[Inaris]

well, let me see if I got this right...

You have a SMS server off domain that you want to use to deploy to your machines.
First, this can be a problem, simply for permissions. It's not advisable to use SMS2003 off domian, as the passwords and accoutns, with in domain are all managed, when off domain can be a mess. Also this would require you so use a heartbeat scan for clients, which means that if you are running a large number of machines, you will slow your network down. Additionally, you will need to run a loginscript like process to automate the sms install as doing it through discovery will be a problem (not 100%).

Also, dont' think of a domain as a bad thing. It's really not all the hard to set it up, and once it's up, you will be amazed at how easy it is to maintain and do things. AD is the simpilest domain structure that I have been able to work with, and it's a thousand times easier than NT was.
The Site thing is required for a good setup. Read through this posting for some more information too...
http://techist.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=73835

Good luck

 

[IBMan]

alright, i'll pretty much only wanna work on it on the weekends, and actually my current server is being kinda slow so im gonna setup windows 2003 server on another computer and use that for a test for now and probably eventually move my hard drives over to that computer, but i'll probably just end this for now and bring i up next weekend so hopefully this can work better. thanks!