Configuration - DP Shares - Permissions

Once you have created the distribution share on your site server (primary or secondary), you'll need to set up share and security permissions to make it work properly.

I enable the shares and besides the defaults, I make the following changes:

Share - Everyone - change to Full Permissions

Security - Added the SMS Administrators group with Full Permissions; Added the SMS_SiteSystemToSiteServerConnection_[site code] (local account) with Full Permissions

These settings work great for me.

Software Deployment - BITs

In order for BITs to work at all, you must enable WEBDAV in your IIS instance. It is prohibited by the default installation of IIS.

Software Deployment - Program Creation

As you are aware, SMS has a program creation utility built in with the capabilities of making working programs out of msi packages for software deployment.

One thing that is bad about this utility is that it does not take into account that some people make packages which have spaces in the names... bad bad bad

So... the command lines which SMS creates are flawed and will not execute at deployment time. Nor have I found where it creates a blatant error log...

With that being said:

Check your program command lines and tweak them as necessary. For example, an MSI named J2SE Version 150.msi would never execute under and SMS created program line as it would read something like:

msiexec /i J2SE Version 150.msi TRASNFORMS=[transform].mst /qb!

(I added my own switches and fun stuff for effect)

This command would error out at the first space after J2SE, indicating a bad parameter. I never saw a log on this and found it by running the command manually. Change these types of command lines in this fashion:

msiexec /i "J2SE Version 150.msi" TRANSFORMS-[transform].mst /qb!

You must encapsulate in quotations the filename which has spaces. (remember... this is a DOS command line)

Pre-Deployment Cleanup

In many cases, people have tried to test out SMS before making a decision to actually kick off an official project.

This type of practice tends to leave a lot of clients out in the production area which have been assigned to a test system. (BAD BAD practice - Never put tests in the production environment.)

Don't forget your friend ccmclean.exe. You can run this remotely using a variety of tools besides SMS, such as GFI Languard and VBScript.

The command you'll want to executly on the remote machines is:

ccmclean.exe /q

That will perform a quiet clean which is seamless to the end user. It does NOT require a reboot and does NOT have detrimentaly effects should it run on a machine which does not have the SMS client installed.

Run it at will.

Tasks - Backup Scheduling

Remember, regular SMS backups turn off all the services, so make sure you schedule your backups either before or after your nightly maintenance.

If you schedule your backups accidentally overlapping your maintenance tasks, you will see critical errors during the times of the backup.

Typical errors will state that the Executive Service is not running.

So... if you see these types of errors during your backup times, change your backup times.

Software Program Changes

When you change something in an SMS Program, i.e. the command line parameters, SMS will automatically replicate those changes to all designated Distribution Points.