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Key Labs Study: Time Savings Comparison for Dell Server Deployment Via Altiris

Todd Mitchell's picture
Todd Mitchell
January 16th, 2006
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Altiris contracted with KeyLabs to empirically substantiate that Altiris Deployment Solution dramatically reduces the time that an administrator must spend deploying and repurposing servers. Read this detailed report.

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The objective of the KeyLabs study was to quantify how much deployment time Altiris Deployment Solution could eliminate for server administrators, compared with traditional server build methods.

Altiris Deployment Solution offers numerous ancillary benefits that are not provided by the other deployment methods KeyLabs tested. These benefits include:

  1. Build consistency. With a manual server build every keystroke represents a potential difference that can translate into an improperly configured server, and ultimately, downtime. The automation provided by Altiris entirely
    eliminates build discrepancies.
  2. Detailed Server History. Altiris maintains a complete history of the server's initial build and any configuration changes over time.
  3. Scheduled Execution. Servers can be tagged for immediate provisioning or scheduled for later deployment during off-peak hours days or months in advance.
  4. Quick Recovery. The recovery process for each server is significantly reduced by leveraging the same jobs used to deploy servers. Jobs can be quickly and easily modified to help recover failed servers or quickly provision
    entirely new servers with the same build configuration as a failed server.
  5. Resource Archiving and Reuse. As a consequence of building and maintaining Altiris jobs, administrators pull together a robust archive of images, scripts, software packages, etc. that can be easily reused.
  6. Role/scope Security. Altiris security can limit access to servers and management capabilities based on a user's role. Altiris also provides a complete audit trail detailing who configured what and when.

Read the complete article for more about how Altiris provides substantial time savings and added benefits over the other server deployment methods tested by KeyLabs.

This shorter article summarizes the methodology and findings of that study.

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