Deployment and Imaging Group

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  • 1.  How Do You Get PCAnywhere On Your Base Image/Clients?

    Trusted Advisor
    Posted Feb 23, 2015 09:43 AM

    I'm redoing my reference image using a VM and looking for some more best practice advice, specifically what's the best way to get PCAnywhere on your client machines?

    In the past, we put the PCAnywhere agent on our base image - which began to be a pain once the agent was updated with cert based communications.  It required me to do the "Preparing PCAnywhere or pcAnywhere Solution Client for Imaging" procedure every time I rebuilt my base image (which isn't all that often, but it is more of a pain than it should be).

    The prepare for image capture task should took care of this manual decryption step, but as far as I know, this never happened.  I never see others complaining about this manual process on Connect, which makes me wonder if others are doing it better another way.

    Is it best practice or recommended to leave the client off the base image and instead rely on the agent setting to install on all computers that don't have it? I've seen quirks when agents are installing during the imaging process causes the whole Symantec agent to seemingly restart, which causes image task failures, which I don't want.  I also generally would feel more comfortable if it was part of the image going out the door so I know it's there to start for every machine.

    Would appreciate any advice, and thanks!

     



  • 2.  RE: How Do You Get PCAnywhere On Your Base Image/Clients?

    Posted Feb 23, 2015 10:08 AM

    Hi Sally.  I assume you're talking about PCAnywhere solution that's bundled with CMS?  if you are then we simply install the management agent and plugins (including PCA) on our sysprep images and enable the PCAnywhere policies.  We've never really had to mess with them, apart from separating those PCs that need full PCA client as opposed to host only.  This seems to work fine for us, and we've never had to do the manual preparing PCA for imaging method you've referred to.

    I'm worried now in case I'm not doing something I'm supposed to!



  • 3.  RE: How Do You Get PCAnywhere On Your Base Image/Clients?

    Trusted Advisor
    Posted Feb 23, 2015 10:16 AM

    Hey Chris,

    Yes, the CMS solution.  That's how it used to work for me.  When Symantec upgraded the agent for cert based communication back in 2012, their best practices changed.  I'll put a ticket in and see if something has changed.  I can't find any updated docs saying these extra steps aren't needed.



  • 4.  RE: How Do You Get PCAnywhere On Your Base Image/Clients?

    Trusted Advisor
    Posted Feb 23, 2015 03:42 PM

    Support said those steps are necessary in 7.5 to continue to use PCAnywhere.  It isn't built into the prepare for image capture task because the solution wasn't built to support PCAnywhere.. and as of 7.6 it won't anymore.  See other thread I started on that. 

    https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/cms-version-pcanywhere-going-away-76



  • 5.  RE: How Do You Get PCAnywhere On Your Base Image/Clients?

    Posted Feb 24, 2015 05:16 AM

    Hi Sally,

    I've not been made aware of these steps before and we've not come across any issues whilst using PCAnywhere without them.  I'll look into those links you've posted.  We will be very disappointed if PCAnywhere is removed from 7.6, as we are in the middle of a campus wide rollout of 7.5 and it's one of the reasons we chose this solution.  It does seem like we're getting conflicting information from Symantec on this - on the one hand saying it will continue in CMS and on the other saying it will be removed.  I've registered for the launch webcast and will be attending the technical training in Reading next month, so it seems I have some important questions that need definitive answers...

    Thanks for the info! :)



  • 6.  RE: How Do You Get PCAnywhere On Your Base Image/Clients?

    Trusted Advisor
    Posted Feb 24, 2015 07:23 AM

    I don't know how you can go from bundling in a remote control product, with detailed reporting, to no longer supporting it with a product upgrade without giving customers a lot of notice.  

    Customers like me who need remote control with advanced reporting options need to purchase another product and budget for that.

    I'm glad 7.5 SP1 HF5 is so far working pretty well for us and that I'm no longer waiting for the Deploy Anywhere changes that will be coming with 7.6 because if this is true, I won't be able to upgrade until we can budget for a remote control replacement.