Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 5-5
Membership Rules page of the Create Device Collection Wizard, showing options for incre-
mental updates and scheduling full updates
Maintenance windows enable you to configure a specific period during which required
deployments, software-update installations, configuration-item remediation, and task
sequences can run on a client. Assigning a specific start time for a program deployment does
not ensure that the program runs at that time. However, you can configure maintenance
windows to ensure that the assigned program installations and the restarts that Configuration
Manager triggers do not occur at inconvenient or undesirable times.
For example, you might configure a required application deployment that installs a large
application and then restarts the computer. To avoid running this during normal business
hours, you might configure the deployment to run at 2:00 A.M. on a specific day. However, an
executive might have taken a portable computer on a business trip before you deployed the
program. When the executive returns to the office after the scheduled start time, the portable
computer would start to install the application a few minutes after the computer connects
to the office network. This could affect the system performance of the computer and, after
installation, force a restart at the very time the executive wants to check an important email
message or make a presentation. To avoid this scenario, configure an overnight maintenance
window for a collection of which the executive's computer is a member. This ensures that the
installation and restarts do not occur during normal business hours.
