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Solution for Remote Software Deployment on Windows?
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?"
We use Altiris.
If you're a hardcore, all-MS shop that uses Microsoft support alot, go with SMS -- otherwise they will blame every issue that you have on the 3rd party distribution tool.
What you're looking for is a pretty mature product by now, and most of the major players have pretty decent products -- you really need to eval them in your environment to get a sense of the strengths and weaknesses. You could probably roll your own solution pretty easily too.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
You sound like the same idiot who stole my job for $20k/y less then what I was getting paid.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Spent several years using the Altiris Deployment Server product to install software packages in a ~4,000 user site. It worked quite well; you install the Altiris Client on each computer you want managed (there's an automated remote install, or it can be done manually, or via logon script, or whatever works for you), and then you can perform a ton of actions on the client computers from the Deployment Server console--installing packages, removing packages, power on (via Wake-on-LAN) and power off events, hardware & software inventory & reporting, all kinds of stuff. The packages you install will generally be MSIs, created yourself with something like Wise Package Studio or from regular off-the-shelf software with a transform of your own making applied post-install.
Microsoft's SMS is also a fine option and competes with Altiris; while Altiris comes with a lot more pre-configured features out of the box, SMS is just as extensible and has the same leg-up over Altiris that most MS products have over competitors--seamless integration into the host OS and domain.
I have a similar number of machines and am an OU admin. I've had issues with GP software deployment so I just use MS Scriptit. You stil have to go around to each machine, but you don't have to sit there and click through everything.
Microsoft SMS server is the preferred tool for Windows remote software deployment. You can also use Group Policy, but that is significantly more limited.
Novell ZENworks, and more specifically, the Desktop Management piece of it.
+5 Insightful, really!
Copy files, and run Regedit. Maybe run regsvr32 a couple times too.
If you need to do it remotely, use SSH.
I think the solution you should be looking for is to get rid of the Win98 machines. I'm guessing you have some proprietary/legacy app or systems control running on them but you'll eventually need to get rid of them anyway. Maybe you should work that aspect first?
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Cloning machines has several advantages. With a set of a few images you can ensure that each month you start with clean boxen. People will learn really fast that important stuff should be on the network drive. Usually, the people who really need to customize their system themselves can be trusted with the updates so you just skip the cloning for those. OK, I admit that doesn't do so well in a Windows network. A major annoyance is that it won't update the machine id after the cloning. On GNU/Linux you can fix that kind of stuff in rc.local but I don't know how to do it with Windows. Ghost might be a smart investment.
I believe BackOrifice was originally designed for this kind of thing, on Win95/98 machines, no less.
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Just put a signed self-installing Active-X control on the company web site on some page that sounds interesting, and let it do drive-by installs.
A couple of cautions.
Any remote distribution product has a fairly high learning curve, and SMS is no exception. This is as much about the infrastructure as it is about the product being distributed. You will often find it necessary to hack apart MSIs, do some intriguing scripting, etc, because vendors are terrible at providing standardized ways of distributing their software in an automated scriptable manner. Adobe (as you mention them specifically), from what I've heard, is especially bad at this. That said, there are many, many people doing the same thing who are willing to share their experiences in mailing lists and on web sites.
Check the requirements and supported platforms for your product before you plunk down your company's cash. For SMS, that includes the service pack level as supportability can change. I'm looking specifically at your use of Windows 98, which I think is not supported in SMS 2003. But check and make sure.
By the way, skipping back to my first point...what duffbeer703 says about MS blaming issues on the 3rd party distribution tool is, in my experience, not as bad as it sounds. (Caveat: we have premier support so they tend to be a lot nicer to us.) But, in general, I've found MS to be pretty helpful on support, and that extends to "best efforts" even if they do point the finger at your other product. That said...remember your other third party product, even if you use SMS, is the products you're trying to distribute.
Good luck. SMS works really well for us, but we have a fairly solid grounding in it. As I mentioned, it's a steep learning curve no matter what product you choose, and you may find there are various system requirements that you might find onerous (do you run AD, for example?). Remember SMS is more than mere software distribution; it's also a huge inventory gatherer which adds to the complexity of running it.
There are many suggestions here to use SMS or Altris when he has stated that he only has 180 users and still 30 running Windows '98. This is not a company that is will to part with cash for enterprise solutions if they still have Windows '98 lying around. It is also not a company that is overly concerned with security.
I worked in a similar environment in the past and I found that with a properly setup Active Directory and some painfully written batch scripts I was able to get software to install perfectly on every machine in the office. All it takes is a few hours of writing the scripts and testing for each software that you want to install and then you never have to think about that software again. I had a master script that ran when a user logged on that mapped all their printers and file shares, set a random local admin password and then check to see that all software was the latest version.
At my current job which is closer to 50,000 computers we use a much more elligant solution in PCCOE however it is really over kill for what you need.
http://odin749.bloger.com/
You can configure and deploy Windows Installer packages in MSI format using Active Directory Group Policy Objects. We use them to enforce up-to-date SAV installations on all desktops in our domain, and plan to start rolling out more installs that way. Supposedly you can even use tools to bundle EXE serup programs in MSI files to deploy them through AD. Beats the heck out of administrative installs or VNC. Hope that helps. Cheers.
Given the size of your enviroment and the language you used, i'm willing to bet that your employer would not be willing to shell out $$$ for something like SMS. Plus since you are asking this question, you would also lack the expertise. SMS has a fairly steep learning curve. There are open source solutions available, but I have not used any of them, so YMMV.
Why not just use login scripts? Its crude by today's standards, but it gets the job done, and it will cost you nothing.
I lost me sig.
Subject says it all...
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
You can create administrative installs for virtually all installations and use GPO's to install the software to the XP machines - works for Win2k and newer.
No cost, and not too tough to learn.
This link is to a Win2k install but is pretty much the same. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314934
cloning XP partitions? Use sysprep!
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302577
OCS Inventory is an OSS tool we had deployed once upon a time. I see the most recent version support application deployment.
Otherwise, if your Vista/XP/2000 machines are on a domain, you can deploy software though domain policies, though I didn't find a really clean way of doing that in the short time I did IT.
We were in the same boat a few years ago and went with Landesk. It has fully configurable patching of both Microsoft vulnerabilities, as well as dozens of other packages such as Firefox and Adobe. They take care of the core of our software patches and updates, and the rest are easily done with some custom packages. It runs about $60 per machine per year. You can't pay a minimum wage intern to manually patch machines for that little money. It also does full inventories including serial numbers for Windows, Linux, and Apple machines.
I've used SMS from Microsoft, and it works great for Microsoft stuff, OK for other deployments, but didn't deal with Apple or Linux at all.
I have a colleague that has worked with Altiris, and he liked it, but it was a bit more expensive per machine.
All in all, Landesk works very well for us and has saved us countless man-hours and effort to keep our network running.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
GPO on steroids. Cheap, powerful. Depoloy MSI, EXE, BAT etc. Bought it and recommend it.
Simply untar the installation into your NFS-mounted /usr directory, boom, everyone has it. What is this "Windows" of which you speak, is it some crufty OS that requires you to sit down at every desktop and install software?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
That's what we've been doing for six years now since moving to a win2k domain. As of now we have around 40 software packages in our "softdeploy" share. Since we have multiple sites, we host the software shares on a DFS root, so we can use on policy for machines in all sites and they get their package from the local site automatically.
I convert non-msi installers into msi format with the freeware program wininstallle 2003 (which is no longer free, but I kept my copy). wininstall tends to create slightly broken packages, so I fix them by running the validation tool in Microsoft's orca utility.
If my boss would spring for a proper msi package creator like adminstudio, I wouldn't have to know so much about msi installers, but that's the way it goes.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Novell Zenworks is definately your tool... Very robust
It's fairly easy to setup and will support Win98
How about http://wpkg.org/? It covers Win98 through XP, works with all manner of installers (MSI, EXE, etc..), can run off a Windows or Linux server, and is completely open source. I set it up for one client who had a linux server with XP clients and we have had pretty good luck with it.
Disclaimer: I work for IBM.
r ov-mgr/
Tivoli can do this plus a bunch of other things. Cross platform support too.
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/p
My workplace uses Kaseya Agent, but I don't know how good it is.
http://www.kaseya.com/
For Microsoft, every software developer is competition, because Microsoft sells both operating systems and user software, in clear violation of any sensible standard of anti-trust. Now that Microsoft is developing online applications, the company is in competition with every IT department, too.
Part of the problem with installing software on Windows is that Microsoft has a monopoly and doesn't want systems to be easily patched. Fixing many issues like that will wait for some new version of Windows Microsoft will sell in the future; that's one of the ways virtual monopolies protect their income, by assuring a necessary product always has failures that can be improved later. (Chevy did that decades ago; that's one reason why Toyota and Datsun are now more popular brands.)
Microsoft has consistently failed to develop good standards and failed to help software developers work by the standards, again part of a monopoly's ignorant adversarial method of maximizing income. Ignorant, because adversarial behavior is self-destructive.
Automate installations with AutoHotKey and AutoIt: We've had some luck getting around quirky install problems by making an installer using AutoIt and AutoHotKey. (The AutoIt link is to the IDE, which is excellent. Install AutoIt and then install the linked package, which after the full installation can be used to update both AutoIt and the IDE at the same time.)
Both AutoHotKey and AutoIt simply simulate pressing the keys and moving the mouse the same way installation of new software is done manually, but according to a script, which is faster and less prone to error than manual installation. In rare cases, AutoHotKey works when AutoIt doesn't, and the opposite is true, too.
Both AutoIt and AutoHotKey are free and mature. AutoHotKey is open source. AutoHotKey is under extremely active and responsive development; there have been 9 new versions since the beginning of 2007 mostly to fix very minor issues recommended by users. Chris Mallett, the developer of AutoHotKey, is a very rare sort of person. He is both an excellent programmer and an excellent writer. It is far easier to get involved with AutoHotKey than with other new programming languages because the documentation is excellent.
We also use AutoHotKey and AutoIt to send a copy of a screen and email it to the IT department when a user presses Windows Key-F11. The software compresses the image first. We like having a record of what a user saw on the screen together with an accurate permanent record of the machine name and time and date.
WPKG - http://www.wpkg.org/ - this is a good way to deploy software under Windows (although it's best under Windows 2000 and Windows XP, I believe, at present). Basically, the software connects to a share (Windows server or Samba) at boot up and runs installer scripts.
The "list of packages to install" can be configured differently for individual PCs, if required, or for groups of PCs.
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
Microsoft is building a new set of tools for managing small business, based on the same concept as WSUS. It's called System Center Essentials and it's probably what you need. http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/sce/default. mspx
we use a thing called "marimba" at work - I'm not an IT guy, so I can't really tell you much about it ... actually, I can tell you a little, from what I hear it basically does a file system diff - I think you take a baseline of a hard drive, then run the apps installation program, tweak anything you need to, then take another snapshot of the drive - anything that's different, marimba pushes out to client machines in the right spot ... or something
-w
calling all destroyers
Another MS product is coming out soon that is aimed squarely at the System Center Essentials. I went to a MS demonstration on it, basically it's quite similar to SMS with a few added perks for small to mid size businesses. One of the perks is being able to slip stream in any install via the AU client (basically it's a customizable WSUS).
Additionally MS isn't going to be as draconian with it's licensing like SMS, rather than needed a CAL per workstation it's is a single license for up to 500 computers. I'm just waiting for it to come out, SMS is a bit too big for what I'm looking for.
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"And may your days be long upon the earth."
I work for a company called Dexon Software (www.dexon.us) We've got a infrastructure management tool for network administrators. It's sold by modules, so you could buy Dexon Software Delivery along with Dexon Agent licences for each one of your PCs, it works on Win95 and up. I'm just a developer, but I know our prices are really competitive.
I usually just roll my own install managers using AutoIt3. It's a nice little scripting utility, free and simple to use. When you get a working script you can compile it to an EXE. So take something like quicktime, put it and the controlling script into it's own directory. You launch the installer, wait for the windows to appear then send the keypresses to the installer. Remember to set focus before sending keys or clicks in case the user tries to alt-tab away. It's pretty quick and easy if you've got a bit of coding skill. I've also used NSIS to wrap installers and enter custom values for our default setups.
Just stick it on a USB drive walk around and stick / click / done.
The funniest part of all this is that I can do a complete server uninstall and re-install with about 3 mouse clicks and 10 minutes of watching screens fly by but the server guys still take upwards of an hour per machine to do the same thing. We have very different point-of-view. Job security for me is my ability to get stuff done correctly as quickly as possible. Job security for them seems to be always having something to do and a list of things not yet done.
Years ago, before I had to worry about deployment issues personally, I'd have to watch all kinds of weird stuff happen in the login script.
Like others have sort of alluded, it's the Windows 98 that makes life hard. Getting rid of those and then using more standard deployment tools would be the best answer. It might even be the cheapest in the long run, but that depends on how many Win 9x boxes are kicking around. If it's a handful out of 180, IMHO, toss 'em.
Back to the point, the Adobe Flash and PDF Reader plugins, and the other common programs are easy to push via things like login scripts. For Flash, a simple one line MSI install command run under local admin priv's works fine. Installing custom tools? Just copy files around, or build little installers. Stick them in the login script.
Windows 9x has no concept of admin, so permissions won't be an issue. For the NT+ boxes, you can create a local admin account that's only used for software installs and use "RunAs".
I began to evaluate PatchLink Update for my employer. I liked what I saw, but I was a bit concerned with the trust model, and also its dependence on Microsoft SQL Server for its backend (we managed to negotiate an acceptable cost for the PLU license, but the SQL Server license for our site was horribly expensive - even at educational rates - unless we ran multiple PLU servers each backended by MSDE. A while ago, I was told about Symantec LiveState Client Management Suite. I've only seen a demo so far, but I liked what I saw, and I plan to evaluate it further together with other interested colleagues. The things I like most were that a) the usual way to create packages (and these could be patches or updates, of course) is to record the UI interactions during a normal install to a script file, meaning that there's no need to depackage whatever (semi-)proprietary installer is being used, ensuring greater reliability and b) its powerful dependencies system, seemlingly having the potential to provide equivalent functionality to Linux's yum or apt.
don't know if '98 is supported or not...but worth a look...
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
here's a quote from their site: http://www.wpkg.org/ This is a list that summarizes what WPKG can do for you:
* deploy software in any format - MSI, EXE, etc.
* deploy software to different groups of computers or single workstations
* easily install, upgrade or remove software
* a "pull" psexec equivalent
* run custom scripts to set printers, synchronize time, manipulate permissions, add registry entries, change Windows settings etc.
* management/administration of end-user workstations
* WPKG works in a domain, in a workgroup, or even over internet or VPN (no domain controller needed)
* WPKG works with Linux (Samba), Windows servers, or any other systems supporting Windows Network Neighbourhood
* WPKG works with Windows 9x, Me*, 2000, XP Pro/Home and 2003 clients
* extremely small footprint on the client
* extremely small footprint on the server
* keep inventory of software installed on your Windows workstations
* intuitive web interface
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
Thank you! While everyone is going on about Altiris (gag) and SMS, there's a completely free solution, and its already present in your domain!
o ws2000serv/howto/winstall.mspx
Just use Group Policy and Veritas WinINSTALL LE (free and included with your windows server CD).
Everything you need to know is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/wind
Free and easy, no muss no fuss.
-1, FUD
Foxit works great! Much thanks to the dude what posted the link. I’ve been looking for something more like Preview.app than ACROBAT.EXE, and this does the trick. And yes, even with a network printer. Imagine that.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Yeah, but at least we’re not left wondering whether he had any useful advice to offer.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?