Deployment Solution

Hello. I just started a new job a month ago that uses Altiris for imaging and software deployment. My previous job I used strictly Group Policy to push software out. With Group Policy, if the computer is in the same OU as the policy or the OU inherits the GPOs above it, it automatically installs the software. From my understanding, Altiris doesn't work like this? You must manually assign the software job every time you that image, it won't grab the appropriate software based on a folder structure?

Similar question with images. Can you assign an image to a computer? So if I need to image an entire building (work at a school), I can just tell them all to image and they automatically grab the appropriate image and software.

To simplify my question.

Computer lab 1 with 5 computers: All computers are assigned Room 100 image with 5 software packages in Altiris.

Computer lab 2 with 5 computers: All computers are assigned Room 200 image with 6 software packages in Altiris.

Anytime I tell a computer in lab 1 to image, it automatically knows to use Room 100 image and install the 5 software packages.

I'm assuming the only way to do this is to make a Job folder, put all the jobs in there and build each lab/room/basic image like this.

My issue with that is if I make a job to install Adobe Reader 1.0 and then copy that job to 30 labs folders, when Adobe Reader 1.1 comes out, I have to change each 1.0 in all 30 lab folders one at a time. With Group Policy, change the same policy and it changes in all OU's since it's the same policy.

Hopefully that makes sense.

And you'll probably ask "why not just use Group Policy then?". The simple answer is that the network admins don't want us to.

Thanks!

 

If I understood you correctly what you can do is:

Create a Task that delivers Software v1.

In your lab folders use Jobs that contain the Task you created above.

So you can have many Jobs that run the very same task.

So when Software v1 updates to Software v2 you will have to work only on one Task.

Just to make it clear - Task does a single operation, Job is a collection of tasks and jobs.

I wonder though - why don't you use Altiris Policies to deliver software to your clients?

Yes and no. You CAN make Deployment Server replicate AD OU structure - there's a script somewhere hiding in the recesses of Connect that will do that, or if you send me a PM I can send you the version we're using currently. If you do that, then your computers will automatically go to the folder and you can send jobs to that folder without needing to manually sort them. Regarding sending jobs, the answer is both yes and no. Yes, you can set one job to do multiple things based on conditions. We have jobs that will only install drivers if it's the right computer type. We have jobs that will skip installing Adobe Flash if it's Windows 8. You could make a job that, based on the computer name or some other value that DS knows about, will deploy different computer images to different computers. Is that the BEST way to do things? Nope. The problem with conditions is that you can only easily see one of the conditions, and so if you have 3 different reimage jobs and you've updated two of them, you'll need to look through the conditions on all of them to try to find the one you missed. Not fun. What sounds like the best solution for you would be using Ian Atkin's wonderful DS Shortcut Accelerator from https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/downloads/ds-shortcut-accelerator-v12. This allows you to make a folder with all of the jobs for a specific lab and have those jobs actually use different jobs so that you can reuse them. It sounds confusing, but it works really well once you get it sorted out. Basically, you have one job to install Adobe Flash. It's a new week, so there's another update to Flash and you need to update the file names because it just went from Flash 11 to Flash 12. With traditional jobs, I'd need to update 11 different Install Adobe Flash jobs for my 11 images. With DSSA, I update my one install job, and since all 11 lab images point to that job, they're done. If you wanted the clients to automatically update using DS 6.9 though, you're basically looking at doing lots of conditions and repeating jobs... Checking if Adobe Reader 1.0 is installed already and if so, a scripted rem Do nothing. Once Reader 1.1 is out, changing the 1.0 condition to the 1.1 upgrade and adding a 1.1 condition where that new has the scripted rem Do nothing. If that does actually sound good, you should probably seriously consider going to SMP 7.5 if your licensing agreement allows it since its policy-based system is much closer to desired world. DS 6.9 is GREAT at doing specific tasks. It's not so great at trying to keep things running without any human scheduling. Unless you like flooding your network with WoL packets. :)