In this phase, the planned hierarchy design should be validated and tested in a lab, and a pilot deployment performed. After the hierarchy design has been validated, Configuration Manager 2007 sites can be fully deployed into the production environment.
The information gathered, and decisions made during the preplanning and planning phases are used to determine which of the three Configuration Manager 2007 deployment methods that will be used during the deployment phase:
- New installation
- In-place upgrade
- Side-by-side upgrade
New Installation
To set up a new Configuration Manager 2007 site, you can use either the Configuration Manager 2007 Setup Wizard or perform an unattended installation using a scripted installation method.
When using the Configuration Manager 2007 Setup Wizard, there are two options for installing new Configuration Manager 2007 sites: simple setup and custom setup. In most cases, simple setup should be used for evaluation purposes only. Custom setup allows greater flexibility in configuring site system and client agent settings.
For more information performing new installations of Configuration Manager 2007, see Configuration Manager Setup Overview.
In-Place Upgrade
If you determine that you can upgrade an existing Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 primary site directly to Configuration Manager 2007, you can perform an in-place upgrade. When you upgrade a site to Configuration Manager 2007 using the in-place upgrade method, the site server and its site systems do not change their site server roles. Also, existing clients do not change their site assignments when the site is upgraded.
 Note |
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| In some scenarios, it is supported to upgrade a site from evaluation version software. For example, you can run Configuration Manager 2007 Setup to upgrade an existing Configuration Manager 2007 site running the evaluation version software. For more information, see the upgrade paths in the applicable version of Configuration Manager Supported Configurations. |
For more information performing in-place upgrades to Configuration Manager 2007, see Configuration Manager In-Place Upgrade.
Side-By-Side Upgrade
In order to consolidate existing SMS 2003 sites, to change the existing site hierarchy reporting structure, or to upgrade server hardware during a site hierarchy upgrade, the side-by-side upgrade method should be used to upgrade SMS 2003 sites. The side-by-side upgrade method involves installing a new Configuration Manager 2007 site and possibly decommissioning the SMS 2003 site that the new site is replacing.
For more information performing side-by-side upgrades to Configuration Manager 2007, see Configuration Manager Side-By-Side Upgrade.