Our upgrade with SMS 2.0 and 2003 running side by side has helped us get familiar with SMS 2003 in a production environment without affecting the existing SMS 2.0 infrastructure.
We installed a new Windows 2003 server and started with a clean slate on our database--there were no remnants of SMS 2.0 tables. We could easily upgrade our SMS 2.0 clients to 2003 by phasing them in. Wherever possible, we deployed the advanced client.
The downside is that we need additional servers and resources to maintain the two hierarchies. So this deployment method may not be feasible for a multitier SMS environment with hundreds or thousands of SMS servers.
We had to re-create queries and collections or import them into the new site, as well as re-create site boundaries and packages/advertisements. Security rights also had to be redefined for SMS 2003. We made those changes with Custom Setup rather than Express Setup, since the former enables only Heartbeat Discovery, which is just a pulse-check of the client machines.
The Express Install enables most 2003 discovery methods, including the client-push installation, the hardware-inventory client agent, the advertised-programs client agent and the remote-tools agent. But some of the enabled defaults can do more than you bargained for, like upgrade every PC in your site hierarchy. You'll get more hands-on experience with SMS if you go through Custom Setup instead.
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