Solution for Remote Software Deployment on Windows? 84
DownTownMT asks: "I work as a Windows administrator in a small company with roughly 180 WinXP/2000 and 30 Win98 machines. Our current method for installing Windows patches is WSUS which works great for the non-98 PC's. However, when installing software, such as Adobe, QuickTime and various other tools, our only method is to manually install it on each machine. What are you sysadmins using to deploy software across all of your machines?"
Why use deployment software at all? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not just use login scripts? Its crude by today's standards, but it gets the job done, and it will cost you nothing.
Re:SMS and Altris 400lb sledge hammer (Score:3, Interesting)
I've spent enough hours trying to get around this.. so now we have these single-purpose systems with severely locked down accounts.
Point is, there may be a good reason they've still got Windows 98 systems in use..
(PCCOE was pretty cool.. I've written a couple site packages for it in a past life.)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Altiris (Score:3, Interesting)
- Copy files to client
- Based on OS+SP, copy some additional files
- Run a script that will do some mojo to combine the additional files
- Run an installer
- Based on the installer results, run another package
- Run another script that does reg patches to work around the problems that the package has
- Chain packages together, so you can dump all your hotfixes with one click.
- Better yet, since the job history shows up on the management screen, you can tell which systems have gotten which patches
There are also automatic package deployment processes, so a centralized office can instruct the remote Altiris servers to install patches on all of its clients at X time - that's great for the branches because they don't even have to worry about system-wide patches, they just happen.In addition to the package deployment system, there are reporting and diagnostic tools too. There is even a "remote desktop" tool, so when an installation goes bad or returns some kind of error, you can remote into the box (and/or lock the user out while you do) and fix whatever is broken while the user is on the phone. A bunch of other tools came with the package too, RapidDeploy(snapshot and deploy app install diffs instead of waiting for the whole install process), profile management (remotely back up/migrate a user or system) and web-based ad-hoc reporting.
Since we were a large company we had a huge Altiris deployment(~80 remote servers for 1000s of clients), and we probably paid $$$$ for it. There are different packages in different sizes available (AFAIK), so you should be able to find a decent match for your company.
(wow, that really sounds like a sales pitch... i don't work for them, i just really liked the product)