You can use SMS to collect hardware and software inventory from the clients in your SMS system. You can enable or disable hardware inventory and software inventory on a site-wide basis.
To manage your assets more effectively and to plan hardware and software upgrades, use the inventory data — displayed for each client in Resource Explorer. One very common use of inventory is to target the computers that you want to install or update software on. SMS gives you accurate system information (such as available disk space, processor type, operating system) about each computer. You can create queries that use inventory data to identify computers that meet the hardware and software requirements for software installation, and you can create collections based on those queries.
Change from SMS 1.2 Software inventory is no longer associated with packages or rule files (package.rul and audit.rul).
You can also use SMS to collect files from clients. For example, you can define a set of configuration files (such as Autoexec.bat and Exchng.ini) to collect from all clients. After SMS collects the files, you can use Resource Explorer to view them.
SMS provides limited support for clients that switch between multiple operating systems. SMS can discover a client in its multiple boot states (for example, when it boots as Microsoft Windows 95 and when it boots as a Windows NT Workstation) and install the SMS client software on all discovered states. However, inventory collected from multiple-boot clients will only reflect the information from the operating system that was running at the time inventory was taken.
Related Topics
Collecting Software Inventory Overview
Collecting Hardware Inventory Overview
Specifying Files to Collect Overview
Extending the Inventory Overview