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It
is easy to say using collections provides more granular targeting, but
how specifically is targeting more granular with collections instead of
using software distribution through group policy?
For
starters, what type of targeting can you do with group policy? Although
you can define a group policy to apply to many different areas, in
terms of software distribution and targeting, the policy typically is
applied at an OU level. Software distributed through group policy can
be either assigned (mandatory) or published (available for
installation). An OU can contain either users or computers. This
provides an effective way to distribute software to a specific targeted
set of computers or users. Sounds powerful, doesn’t it?
Okay,
so what’s different from that with ConfigMgr? For starters, think about
what a collection is and how it is used. A collection is a custom
grouping of systems (or a grouping of users) based on criteria you
define. To match group policy, you can actually create a collection
based on an Organizational Unit. You can also define a collection based
on the name of a server (or use wildcards), or a system that has a
particular software package installed on it, or a system without a
particular software package installed. You can define collections based
on hardware—does it have adequate free disk space? Does it meet the
processor or operating system requirements to allow installation of the
program?
The real power of ConfigMgr
targeting is in the definition of a collection. You can define a
collection based on just about any information gathered by ConfigMgr,
which is extremely diverse. This includes software inventory, hardware
inventory, information in Active Directory Users or Computers, and even
custom information such as the existence of a particular Registry key!
You
can also use collections to schedule when software is deployed, based
on maintenance windows defined for the collection. ConfigMgr can even
control when to reboot systems after deploying software that requires a
reboot.
Consider a client environment with
collections built based on a custom Registry key containing the
criticality level (tier) of the server, which is then used to define a
collection used as part of defining maintenance periods. This means
that with a collection you can target anything you can target with a
group policy object, and go far beyond that based on what is necessary
for a particular environment.
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