In Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007, maintenance windows (sometimes called service windows) provide administrators with a way to define a period of time that limits when changes can be made on the systems that are members of a collection. These windows restrict operating system advertisements, in addition to software update deployments and software distribution advertisements. When a maintenance window is applied to the collection, changes to collection member systems cannot typically be made outside of this time frame. This provides a safety net for administrators to ensure that client configuration changes occur only during periods when little or no impact to the organization will occur.

When maintenance windows are configured on collections that are targeted for software update deployments, you should consider the following:

Important
When you create an advertisement or deployment, you can set it to override the preset maintenance windows if the software update or advertised program is critical.

Detailed information about maintenance windows is in the software distribution section, under Software Distribution Maintenance Windows. See the following topics:

About Software Distribution Maintenance Windows

About the Program Run Scenario Using Maintenance Windows

See Also


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