Clients in Configuration Manager 2007 must locate their default management point during site assignment, and as an on-going process to remain managed. There are various ways that clients can find their default management point in Configuration Manager 2007, and the most secure method is through Active Directory Domain Services. However, if this is not possible (for example, you have not extended the Active Directory schema or clients are from a different forest or a workgroup), then the preferred alternative is to use DNS publishing.

For more information about how clients find management points, see Configuration Manager and Service Location (Site Information and Management Points) and Determine If You Need to Publish to DNS.

Before configuring clients to find their management point using DNS publishing, ensure that DNS servers on the intranet have service location resource records (SRV RR) for the site's default management point. This is achieved either automatically with a configuration in Configuration Manager (see How to Automatically Publish the Default Management Point to DNS) or manually, by the DNS administrator manually adding the record to DNS (see How to Manually Publish the Default Management Point to DNS).

Note
Network load balancing (NLB) management points are not published to DNS, so sites that use an NLB management point cannot use DNS publishing.

You can configure clients to find the management point using DNS publishing either during installation, or after installation:

To configure clients to find their management point using DNS publishing during client installation:

  • Install the client with the following CCMSetup client.msi properties:

    • DNSSUFFIX=<domain of the management point>

    • SMSSITECODE=<site code of client's assigned site>

    Note
    You cannot use auto-site assignment when configuring clients to find their management point in DNS, but must directly assign them to a site. For more information about the CCMSetup command line properties, see About Configuration Manager Client Installation Properties.

To configure clients to find their default management point using DNS publishing after client installation:

  1. Navigate to Configuration Manager in the Control Panel of the client computer, and then double-click to open its properties.

  2. On the Advanced tab, specify the DNS suffix of the client's default management point in the option Specify or modify a DNS suffix for site assignment below.

  3. Click OK.

    Note
    For more information about the options displayed in this dialog box, see Configuration Manager Properties: Advanced Tab.

See Also