Central Management Server - can it manage itself? I'm setting up a SQL Server 2012 lab on Windows 2008 R2 which has 5 SQL Servers. I registered SQL1 as my central management server and created a group under this server that includes all the servers and the CMS itself. I'm a bit confused since the documentation says the CMS cannot be a member of a group it maintains. However, I'm able to include it in the group, run multiple queries and evaluate policies successfully.

Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb895144.aspx see under "Related tasks"

I've seen other forum posts where users have issues registering the CMS itself but I don't have this problem at all. Has something changed?

I'm running SQL Server 2012 Enterprise SP1 and SSMS 2012.

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (SP1) - 11.0.3128.0 (X64) 
Dec 28 2012 20:23:12 
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation
Enterprise Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.1  (Build 7601: Service Pack 1) (Hypervisor)

Here's the CMS returning queries for the whole group.
I had also previously assumed that this wasn't possible at all, until I started playing around with it.

From what I can tell, the matching is only done by the server network name that's entered.

If you attempt to add a server to the tree with the same network name, it won't allow it; however, if you use a different network name, even though it may point to the same instance, it does work.

For example, I successfully registered my local instance .\SQL2008R2DEV as a CMS, and then successfully registered (local)\SQL2008R2DEV in the tree. (Tested in 2012 Management Studio.)

From a management perspective, this may or may not be a good idea. Furthermore, if Microsoft decides to tighten down the policy, any reliance on this ability will force you to change your process.

Certainly if SQL1 would be a production instance in your case, this is a bad idea because you want to separate management duties from serving user data duties. I strongly recommend using a separate instance of SQL Server just for CMS purposes, particularly in a production environment.