Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 : Collections - Defining Collections

Although our focus here is on the use of collections in the package distribution process, collections have many other uses. Collections are groups of SMS resources and can consist not only of computers, but also of Microsoft Windows users and user groups, as well as any resources discovered through the Network Discovery method or the Active Directory directory service discovery methods. Package programs can be advertised to collections that consist of users, user groups, or computers. Computer collections, however, are the starting point for performing many client management tasks. For example, you can initiate Remote Tools, view inventory information through Resource Explorer, and view Event Viewer and diagnostic information for each client by selecting the client through a collection.

We know that if a computer is discovered but not installed as an SMS client, that computer can’t be the recipient of an advertisement since the Advertised Programs Client Agent is an SMS client component. On the other hand, a discovered Windows user obviously can’t be installed as an SMS client, since there’s no equivalent user installation method. However, a discovered user can be the recipient of an advertisement when that user is logged on at an SMS client. For example, suppose that a company’s auditing department has developed a spreadsheet that its auditors use when auditing other departments. If SMS has discovered the auditors’ user accounts, those user accounts can be grouped into a collection called Auditors. The audit spreadsheet can then be advertised to the Auditors collection and would subsequently be available to each auditor at whatever SMS client they log on to, in whatever department they’re visiting.

In many ways, collections are similar to Windows global groups. You use Windows groups to organize users into easily managed units. Groups are used to assign access permissions to Windows resources such as printers, folders, files, and shares. When a new user joins a group, that user automatically inherits all the permissions assigned to that group.

The same concept applies to SMS collections. You use collections to organize your SMS discovered resources into manageable units. For example, suppose you’ve installed 1000 clients as SMS clients. These clients will appear as part of the All Systems collection in the SMS Administrator Console. If each of these clients belongs to a different business unit or department within your organization and you need to send these computers packages based on their affiliation with their business unit or department, you could create a collection for each business unit or department and add each client to the appropriate collection. Your clients are now grouped into manageable units to which you can easily target packages.

Collections can contain sub-collections to give the SMS administrator more flexibility (or more headaches, depending on your point of view). Subcollections work in much the same way as nested groups in Windows. Actions performed on a main collection can also be performed on its subcollections. The most common use for subcollections is in connection with advertisements. Package programs are advertised to collections, but you can also configure an advertisement to target a collection’s subcollections as well.

Subcollections are not considered to be members of the collection that contains them. Think of subcollections more as a convenient way to link different collections so that they can be treated as one unit. Membership rules are unique for each subcollection and don’t affect any other collection. We’ll look at collection membership in the next section.

Collection Membership

Collection membership rules can be either direct or query-based. Direct membership is a manual membership method, meaning that you define which resources are to be members of the collection. You’re also responsible for maintaining the collection over time. If, for example, computers are added or removed from the business group or department, you’ll need to add or remove those computers from their corresponding collections.

Query-based membership, on the other hand, is more dynamic in nature. You define the rules by which the collection membership is established, and then SMS keeps the collection up-to-date by periodically rerunning the query. For example, suppose your company standard for naming computers is to include a business unit or departmental code—say, all computers in the finance department are named FIN203-PCx, where x is a value that’s incremented each time a new computer name is needed. You could create a collection named Finance whose membership rule is based on a query that searches the database for all computers whose names begin with FIN203. SMS would automatically populate the collections with the appropriate computers. If computers are added or removed from the finance department, the collection would be updated automatically when the collection query was next executed.

As you can see, query-based collections are generally more practical and efficient than those based on direct-membership rules.

Predefined Collections

As mentioned, collections represent discovered resources that haven’t necessarily been installed as SMS clients. For example, Windows users and user groups can be discovered as resources for an SMS site and the discovered users and user groups are automatically made members of the All Users and All User Groups collections—two examples of predefined collections.

Collections are used to group resources into more easily managed units. When you install SMS 2003, 12 default collections are created. These default collections are described in Table 1.

As you can see, these default collections are designed to group resources by operating system. The collections can be used as targets for receiving advertisements. They’re updated once a day by default, but you can change that frequency by clicking the Schedule button in the Membership Rules tab in the collection’s Properties window. Note that you can manage the default collections only from the central site. You can’t modify them from child sites.