SQL Server® 2008 Administration: Real World Skills for MCITP Certification and Beyond

Centralized Server Management

Now that you've seen how to create conditions and policies, you're probably excited to learn how you can centralize the management of these policies. The key to centralization is the creation of a Central Management Server or CMS. In this section, you'll see how to create a CMS and how to register subscriber servers or instances with the CMS.

Major Benefits and Requirements

Before you see the steps for creating a CMS, you should understand the benefits of having one and the requirements for having one.

The requirement is that the CMS must be a SQL Server 2008 server or later. While a SQL Server 2005 server can be registered with the CMS, it cannot act as the CMS. In fact, SQL Server 2000 and later servers can be ...