No more hiding in the server room
Multi-site software deployment
Greetings programs!
We're currently evaluating our software distribution system for such fun things as Office and AutoCAD across all nine of our sites and I'm wondering what other people do.
At present we use Group Policy Software Installation (GPSI) pulling from multiple DFS targets (one per site). This way we can use one GPO to deploy say AutoCAD 2010 to all the required machines across the whole company. One of the nice things about this method is that it will always pull from the local DFS target and not over the WAN.
However I have an issue with the latest versions of AutoCAD and Office - they don't support this method any more.
We've started looking at the SCE offering from Microsoft and whilst it would add a lot of nice features around monitoring clients, reporting etc it can only deploy from it's local repository. For us, this is a deal breaker. Some of our deployment packages are 4Gb+ and our smaller sites have only ADSL / SDSL site links. Understandably this would make it unfeasable to roll out software in this manner.
Do any of you smart people out there have any suggestions as to software / techniques to look at to accomplish this? How are people coping with multi-site software role outs at present?
Cheers.
We're currently evaluating our software distribution system for such fun things as Office and AutoCAD across all nine of our sites and I'm wondering what other people do.
At present we use Group Policy Software Installation (GPSI) pulling from multiple DFS targets (one per site). This way we can use one GPO to deploy say AutoCAD 2010 to all the required machines across the whole company. One of the nice things about this method is that it will always pull from the local DFS target and not over the WAN.
However I have an issue with the latest versions of AutoCAD and Office - they don't support this method any more.
We've started looking at the SCE offering from Microsoft and whilst it would add a lot of nice features around monitoring clients, reporting etc it can only deploy from it's local repository. For us, this is a deal breaker. Some of our deployment packages are 4Gb+ and our smaller sites have only ADSL / SDSL site links. Understandably this would make it unfeasable to roll out software in this manner.
Do any of you smart people out there have any suggestions as to software / techniques to look at to accomplish this? How are people coping with multi-site software role outs at present?
Cheers.
Tags: 2010, GPSI, SCCM, SCE, deployment, software
Views: 113
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Shane Corellian on -
Hi Graycat,
We are actually working on a product to do just what you are asking... in the mean time, if you still need to solve this problem you can get your solution for free by running a few extra steps.
You can install either PDQ Deploy or Admin Arsenal at each site and then either solution would maintain a respository of the necessary software. You would need to connect to each solution (perhaps via Remote Desktop or DameWare Mini Remote) and launch your distributions. PDQ Deploy is free and Admin Arsenal is $399 per Admin (so if you are the only admin you would pay only once). Admin Arsenal also comes with a fully functional 30 day trial so you could see if this is a fit.
Either way, free or not, I'd be happy to guide you through the deployments if possible. You can get it done easily, for certain.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Rouse on -
Hi,
We are about to embark on deploying 2011 and office 2007 in a similar fashion (Multi site with each client pullig the install from a local DFS share).
What issues did you encounter with AutoCAD as from what I have read it appears it does support this?
http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2011/ENU/pdfs/acad_install.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY9a-0RUz90
Paul
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Permalink Reply by Graycat on -
HI Paul,
Office 2007 via GPSI and local DFS shares works fine though can take a while in the install phase of things on the client but nothing too major.
AutoCAD 2011 I've not managed to get working at all via GPSI and DFS successfully at all. 2010 was a complete battle but we managed to get it working in the end using a few funky scripts to tidy it up. I've outlined what I did on my blog (graycat.wordpress.com) so I won't clutter here with a full explanation,
After much discussions with AutoDesk we are throwing in the towel and trialling SCCM which will also do Office 2010 as GPSI is no longer an option there either.
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