Client Management Suite

Hi Everyone,

Hoping someone might be able to help...

We're introducing Mac's as a standard supported hr/sw in our environment and am trying to evaluate Altiris (which we already have) against ARD. The most attractive aspect of ARD so far is the price. Compared to Altiris it's a bargain, other than that I'm not sure.

Areas I'm interested in:

Integration with Active Directory
Asset management
Software & patching delivery
Remote desktop
Remote assistance/administration
Centralised management (eg Group Policy type stuff)

I'm quite au fait with how to do all the above in a Windows environment so if you can compare from a similar perspective that would great!!

Can anyone with experience of both give me a pros & cons aspect to the two packages?

Thanks in advance!!

 

Hey Stuck, they both have their pros and cons.  Yes, Altiris can be modified to do almost anything ARD can do, but it will require some work and coding on your end.

What I mean by that is that Altiris out of the box will not remote control or image a mac.  You will have to follow the guides such as here in order to image.  Also, to do custom inventory, you will have to follow the information here.  Next, in order to remote control, you will need to follow the procedures here.  Out of the box, you can push a .PKG file fairly easy by a simply copy job to the local machine.

Remember, most of these guides are using the DS, but you can purchase products for NS that will do things like remote control via Carbon Copy.

 

The one big thing I remember everyone complaing about with ARD though is that the scanner lists for the computers is somewhat cryptically and unintuitively.  Altiris will make that part much easier via the Agent so that you can figure out which machine on the ARD list is the right machine to push a package.

I work in a K-12 school district and I can attest to the pain of a duel OS enviroment. AD intergration, when it works, is thin at best, they will not apply GPO's or map the home folder. Altiris works as well as any I have seen (LANDesk, Mangesoft, CA all evaluated withing the last 2 years) which is to say there is a gulf between what the sales people say it will do (and how easy) and the reality. We had a consultant in here for 6 months setting up software delivery, updates and AD intergration, when Apple released a new version and AD intergration broke. He left to take a job with Apple and we are back to doing things the old way, one at a time, hand loading software. Deja Vue 1990's.

My advice would be to keep the MACS off your network. If that is not possible, setup a seperate network segment for them, with their own X-server and hire a dedicated tech to administrator it. In our enviroment we have 20-25% MACS and two techs to support them, while 3 of us handle the 75-80% windows side. Unless there is an overwhealmingly compelling reason that you have to have them, avoid them. If you can't, be sure the "suits and ties" understand that they will increase your support costs disproportionetly to the number of computers. Plus the fact they are costing 30% more than a comparable Dell workstation. Plus the difficulty find an experienced Apple trained tech. Plus working with the company. It all delightfull.

Don't misunderstand me, I am not against Apples. If we had an entirely Apple network, I would not want windows machines on there.

Sorry to disagree with you Palvaran, what you state was true in version 6 of Client Management Suite but is false in version 7.

CMS 7 includes PC Anywhere which OUT OF THE BOX has the ability to remote control Windows, Linux and Mac computers.  If you deploy the Altiris Agent you can then install the subagents for Software Delivery, Inventory, and PC Anywhere automatically.  THis hsould help greatly with the management of the Mac machines.  Also in Altiris 7 we can control how the Mac self update runs  I've done all of this at a customers site so drop me a note for more detail.

Also you can image a Mac OUT OF THE BOX, this was first supported in DS 6.9 SP2 and continues in DS 7.1

CMS 7.2 will do everything you need with one note: the PCanywhere component is not all that spiff. I have an open question (which got moved to the PCanywhere forum) on how to get it set up. The documentation is junk.
I have been using NS for software deployment policy for years. We've used it mostly for Macs because Open Directory doesn't do managed installs like Active Directory does. We're only now starting to look at it more for Windows as we plan for Windows 7
We still use ARD for the moment, but I'm hoping that once I get PCAnywhere under control that it will get phased out.

 I saw that you posted the new thread but then it quickly disappeared...:)

I'm getting some answers for you and will post them next week.

Andrew 

thanks, Andrew! Appreciate it