Finally your company decided to buy and use Deployment Console. The Deployment Console will be used to deploy bare metal images, install software and deliver Virtual Software Archives to the clients. Preferably you wish to use it with a single image for all your hardware. Now you have the task of installing the Deployment Solution, configuring it, and getting the best out of it.
In this case the company has a large head office and several small sites in other cities.
This is the first article in a series.
The things I'm going to discuss are as follows:
- Prepare your Deployment Solution implementation
- Installing Deployment Solution 6.9 on your home site and on the other sites
- Configure PXE and distribute tasks and synchronize between the Deployment Servers.
- Building a Hardware Independent Image.
- Get started with your new tool.
1. Prepare Your Deployment Solution Implementation
Now you have the green light to implement Deployment Solution. You always can get the software and install it, but it is much better to prepare very well first. That will prevent you from getting a big mess when you forget to configure something or when you encounter behaviour that was unsuspected.
Most important is that you should be aware in front when you need additional software to do a specific task.
Step 1: Decide what server to use for your head Deployment Server.
You need a piece of hardware that has at least enough storage. Best is to use at least 250Gb storage. Deployment Solution does not need a lot of hardware. A single or dual core processor with 2 or 4 GB of RAM is enough. I use Deployment Solution in a VMWare machine.
Step 2: Decide what hardware to use for the Deployment servers on the remote sites. Again the only thing you need is to make sure that you have enough storage. It should be about the same as for the head server.
Step 3: Take a look at the bandwidth usage. You have to find out what hours the least amount of data traffic occurs between your Offices. Define a time windows that you should use to distribute software, settings and tasks between the head office and the site office. Make sure this time frame should be at least 4 to 5 hours.
Step 4: Define how many different computers and portables you have. I you only use HP hardware or Dell software and always buy in large numbers, then you can decide to deploy them by using an image for every hardware sort. If you have several brands, and you have to maintain dozens of images, then it is better to use HII (Hardware Independent Imaging).
It is much easier if you decide what track you are going to choose.
Step 5: Gather all the software you need. You need an SQL server. You also need to configure IP helper. You need to decide if you have Vlans in the big offices. Where are you going to store your SQL database? Is it redundant or fail proof? Do you make backups of the data store?
Step 6: You also have to decide how to deploy the Deployment Solution agent to all computers. Doing this by just getting them in the database the first time when you logon will give you lots of computers that will stop and wait for deployment to instruct. Your users will not like this behaviour. The phones in your first line helpdesk will melt in the head of the calls, and you helpdesk is going to be crazy.
So if you have everything decided, you can start with the implementation.
As a reminder I will give a list of software below that you need, and a list of what I use in my environment.
What you need?
- On every site a hardware box configured as a server or a Vmware server.
- Deployment Solution 6.9. You can download a trial version on www.symantec.com/products
- You want to have HII tools to make a universal image for all you clients. You can download them on https://www-secure.symantec.com/community/download/3344/hii-tools-321-deployment-server-68-68-sp1-and-68-sp2
- You need a database solution like Microsoft SQL server or SQL express. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=220549b5-0b07-4448-8848-dcc397514b41&displaylang=en
- Microsoft DFS snapin. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738552.aspx
- Microsoft DOS files.
In my demo environment that I take to customers and use in my demos I use:
- HP dc7900 with a Quad core 2,66 GHZ processor
- 8 GB DDR2 memory
- 2 hard disks 500MB SATA3
- 1 Additional Intel 1GB network card
- 1 Network attached hard disk 1 TB with GB LAN.
The computer is installed with Windows 2008 Domain controller.
On top of that is VMWare server 2.0 and VMWare infrastructure client.
For this series of articles I built:
- A Windows 2003 server for my head Office
- A Windows 2003 server for my site office
- 2 Windows XP clients for building the image and deploy it.
- 1 Windows XP client to test all my scripts, tasks and software.
- Windows XP service pack 3.
- Microsoft SQL express 2005
- Microsoft DFS snap in.
- Altiris Deployment Solution 6.9
- HII tools from CondorMan
- Altiris SVS
- Symantec Endpoint Protection
- Vmware server 2.0
The environment is used a lot and I'm able to demonstrate all kind of solutions on it. I even use it by building VM's that can be copied to the customer. They just have to make it a member of the domain, and the machine is up and running.
Also make sure you have a very good virus defence. I use Symantec Endpoint protection in my environment to keep the bad guy's out of my door.
In the second article I'm going to explain how I implement the server in my head office. This will be my main server and it will store the database that the other servers use. I also keep all the software that I deploy on that server.
All the other servers will replicate.
This implementation will ensure that all my clients are listed in every Deployment Console. So the head office sees all its clients and all the clients from the other offices, where the other offices are able to see all clients from the head office also.
When I deploy a task from one of the deployment consoles, the task will be started on the client but it will not send all the software over the internet.
The clients in the remote office will use the software that is on their local Deployment Console.
Because I configure PXE in every site, bare metal deployment will also be done from the server that is near the client. The image is on that server and the client will connect to that one.
I use Microsoft DFS to synchronize all data. I will explain that in depth. You just have to follow the steps to get that up and running.
As a big fan of SVS I also will show you how to deploy SVS to your clients, and how to build a job to import, activate and reset an application.
The fourth article will help you implement and configure Hardware Independent Tools on Deployment Solution 6.9. It will also help you build a database with the correct drivers. In my case I only use virtual Machines, and the hardware is always the same. But it will help you to understand how to configure and implement HII tools.
I will do some tasks and show you what the results are. Also I will help you with some of the error messages you get. I will Build an image, deploy it to another machine, configure it to be unique, and deploy some software to it. I will deploy and activate SVS packages, and I will show you some monitoring and tools how to manage your environment. This article will contain some best practices to prevent you from accidentally give your users a day or two extra vacation.
Last but not least:
This series of articles will help you implementing, configuring and using your new Deployment Solution. But you now have a very strong tool.
Be very carefully in playing with it. It is not just a toy. One small mistake can help you send over 500 users home because you are now able to destroy all clients just by making a wrong drag and drop action. You can stop all clients from functioning, just by making a very slight mistake in PXE configuration.
And you will not be the first one that accidentally shuts down a computer were the finance department is working on to get all salaries paid.
With a very well built and configured Deployment Solution you will become the Jedi master of your company's universe.
If you are not confident or need to know more, read the articles on the Juice, and get yourself Symantec authorized training.
Deployment Console - Index of Articles
Deployment Console, Part 2: Installing Deployment Solution 6.9 on Our Home Site and on Other Sites