Re: How are you deploying CSA to all your workstations?

m-carey · ‎11-30-2005

I don't want to have to go to each PC in my network and install. Can I create an *.msi file and push it out through AD? How do you do it?

tsteger1 · ‎12-02-2005

Can you not push out the agent kits with AD? I'm not familiar with AD deployment as we use Novell ZENworks for software deployment. We deployed over 3000 agent kits that way with no problems. The agent kit behaves quite well even in silent mode.

Just a note, we deploy all agents in test mode and move them to protect mode after making any necessary exceptions.

Tom S

m-carey · ‎12-05-2005

There is a software deployment piece of AD, but it uses *.msi files instead of *.exe files. I'm not sure how to get the *.exe file from the agent kit to a *.msi file. I guess I could use a login script and point to the http://server/agentkit.exe but are there any switches I could put in the login script so that it would run silently?

As far as deploying, once you get the client in one group (i.e., test mode agent kit) you can move them and categorize them afterwards by just moving them into another group, right? So I shouldn't worry about trying to categorize (group them) before hand?

tsteger1 · ‎12-05-2005

You could certainly use a login script to launch the .exe and as long as you built your agent kits to install silently, it should work fine. You can also download the agent kits and put them wherever you want to install them from. We installed ours using the web address and the .exe.

We have ours restart automatically because users don't always do it. We just let them know ahead of time.

You are correct about deploying the agents in groups. You can build your kit to put them in a particular group and them move them as necessary once they register.

Tom S

m-carey · ‎12-06-2005

We use a software package deployment tool called Prism, and I create a package and it works fine that way.

For people without 3rd party systems, I did find you can download WinInstallLE which is a free app that does the same thing, but saves the package as a *.msi file so you can deploy it through AD. It takes a baseline picture of your PC, you make the changes, then it takes another pic and saves the difference.

N3t W0rK3r · ‎12-09-2005

Has anyone used SMS to deploy the agents? If so, is there anything special that needs to be done, and how well does it work?

Thanks.

John