Microsoft IT's Client Health Strategy
Summary: client health is a challenging computer management problem, as we've discussed before. Over the years Microsoft IT has developed a multi-faceted strategy, consisting of the following elements. It is an evolving story.
• Reports based on SMS client data (indicates client availability). History-based trends highlight anomalies that require intervention.
• Reports based on SMS Client Health Tool (CHT) data (indicates whether clients are online).
• Reports based on SMS client data and CHT data (indicates machines that are online but not available for management, and thus clients that are probably broken).
• A computer startup script, which checks for SMS client problems and corrects them if necessary (but only on computer restart).It is very flexible and powerful, and thus can address a wide variety of problems.
• Client Push Installation (CPI) for clients that are not available for management (have no reported inventory data, etc. for an extended period). This targets both offline and online computers, requires privileged server-to-client connectivity, and is executed only once per day at most.
• Manual client remediation for datacenter clients. Datacenter clients are high-value servers that are almost always accessible, so this is a practical (though still expensive) solution in this case (it would not be so practical for desktops).
• Manual client remediation for locked-down clients. Locked-down clients are tightly managed and precisely configured, so they can be found and remediated with a fairly high degree of success (though this is also expensive, and applies to a small minority of our clients). Most MSIT clients do not have these advantages.
• Manual client remediation for regular (non-locked-down) Microsoft IT clients when users complain. This can be done by users, helpdesk (tier 1), tier 2, tier 3 (SMS administrators), or tier 4 (SMS engineers), depending on the severity of the problem. The cost increases at each level. Users rarely complain, so this cost is fairly low
I've had the privilege of talking to a variety of organizations over the years about client health and they use a combination of simlar (but not usually the same) client health management options.
We are always looking for enhancements to our strategy, and I look forward to telling you about those in coming months.The main point for today is that you do have a variety of options available to you, and so your client health strategy should be creatively based on whatever options are relevant to your needs, and cost-effective for your environment and client health expectations.