I like the idea of setting up a Central Management Server to run queries against other servers that I have to maintain. I'd like to be able to run one query to get information from all servers, like log sizes, backup history, index fragmentation, etc.
I'm just not sure how to set it up correctly so that I can also run these queries against the host database. It seems crazy that you can't manage your Central Management Server.
How do people get around this? Do you create a specialized instance whose sole purpose is acting as the management server? Or pick a server that you just don't care about the health?
I don't want to have to run one query for the single server, and a second for the groups. That seems to defeat the purpose.
Am I missing something?
Update with solution copied from comment below
Oh snap! I stand corrected.
My original attempt was to register the CNAME/Alias as the CMS, then register the server by name. This always failed.
Second attempt, registered the CMS using the server name. I then registered the server using the IP address and this worked. I don't have clue how they're different, but it works so I'm happy.