The primary purpose of the Windchill server manager is to introduce clients to method servers as needed. The Windchill architecture separates the server manager VM from the method server VM for purposes of reliability and scalability. Clients call the server manager to obtain a reference to a method server and then communicate directly with that server as long as they can. When more than one method server is available, the server manager returns references so as to distribute the load among the available servers.

The protocol for obtaining method server references in the client is encapsulated within the classes that invoke remote methods. It includes fault tolerance for network failures and server manager restarts, and generally is never accessed directly by Windchill customizers.