Vista Support, Improved Asset Tracking in SMS 2003 SP3

Customers of Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003—Microsoft’s product for managing hardware and software assets, distributing software, applying patches, and tracking application usage—will need Service Pack (SP) 3 to manage Windows Vista systems with SMS. Just released into public beta and due for a late March 2007 release, SP3 also rolls up bug fixes and adds new functionality in the form of Asset Intelligence, a technology acquired though Microsoft’s purchase of AssetMetrix, which provides more extensive hardware and software asset inventorying capabilities than SMS 2003’s original asset tracking features.

Managing Vista with SMS

Although Microsoft updated SMS 2003’s OS Deployment Feature Pack in Oct. 2006 so that SMS could deploy Vista system images (see “Updated OS Deployment Tool in Beta” on page 18 of the Aug. 2006 Update), SMS 2003 still could not inventory a Vista system or distribute any patches or software packages to it.

With SP3, SMS 2003 and SMS 2003 R2 servers get the same capabilities to manage Windows Vista clients as they do with Windows XP clients. This includes support for SMS’s Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates (ITMU), which enables SMS to detect and install patches on managed computers.