Patent ID: 7562410

Claim:
A method for scenario analysis, capacity planning, and hardware sizing in an administrative tool system for software distribution, asset management and patch deployment, wherein the administrative tool system is distributed across a plurality of server computing devices at a plurality of physical locations in a software distribution network and wherein each of the plurality of server computing devices has a specific physical hardware configuration including memory, one or more processors, one or more disk arrays and one or more network interface devices, and wherein each of the plurality of server computing devices is configured to have a specific software distribution and management role within the administrative tool system, the method comprising: an act of selecting a particular computing device to be a management system which will execute remaining acts of the method, an act of the management system obtaining a software distribution network topology model for the software distribution network, the software distribution network topology model comprising network environment data and software distribution usage data, the act of the management system obtaining the software distribution network topology model further comprising: an act of the management system collecting the network environment data through an interactive process with a system administrator, the network environment data comprising availability and speed of connectivity between the plurality of locations in the software distribution network, and number of client computing systems at each of the plurality of locations; and an act of the management system dynamically generating the software distribution usage data from at least the following: size and frequency of hardware inventory, size and frequency of software distribution packets that correspond to the software distribution network, estimated network traffic, estimated size of software distribution packages and frequency of their delivery, and potential for roaming client computing systems; an act of the management system dynamically generating, through analysis of the network environment data and software distribution usage data, a plurality of possible distribution roles for at least one server of the plurality of servers in the software distribution network; an act of the management system displaying, for the at least one server, the plurality of possible distribution roles and information about each of the plurality of possible distribution roles; an act of the management system obtaining from the system administrator a selection of a distribution role from the displayed plurality of possible distribution roles; an act of the management system performing a location analysis using the selected distribution role; and an act of the management system generating a hardware configuration recommendation for the selected distribution role.