Deployment Solution

I'm trying to rescue our last minute DR from turning into a total cluster****

Here's the scenario. We have our DR server site in Cincinnati. Our DR client location is in Columbus. Our management will not allow us to move the DS server to the Columbus site, nor our client location to Cincinnati. The latency between the sites means that building an actual image, or 50 in our case, over the connection between the two is impossible in the time frame we have.

To add to this, we dont know what the client hardware will be. Theyre going to be provided to us from our parent company who does not share our exact environment. It may be machines that we already have images for, but its just as likely that they are machines that we do not have in our environment. All we know is that they will be Dells.

I wont even go into what the current plan is, its so backwards and nonsensible. I've had a couple of ideas but as of this moment they are untested. It's not actually my responsibility this year for our DR planning, but I feel I have to step in and try to help. If anyone has any suggestions on an approach, I would be so grateful... I'll mail you a cookie.

My current idea is to take on of our images via portable HDD or DVD etc, share it out on one of the client machines in Columbus. We could run the share off of a prebuilt laptop, or build the first machine manually. If the hardware is not already accounted for, we'll need to drop appropriate drivers and HAL files into the image using image editor.

Unless I'm mistaken, we should be able to have the machines boot to PXE, pull down the linux automation client, modify the mapping of the image location to point to the local share point with the modified images and bypass the slow pipe between our actual DS server and the clients.

Are there any major snags I havent seen here? I'll be taking it to the lab as soon as possible, but input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Is there a possibility that you could piggy back on an existing server at the DR site? All you would need would be drive space and a SQL server to connect to. In our environment, at the DR site we virtualized the DS, NS and SQL servers. We figured this being a DR site, the activity should be minimal and should be able to handle the temporary load if a disaster were to strike.

To ensure that the images and packages are always replicated, we use DFS. We use VMWare, but I'm sure you could get away with Microsoft Virtual PC if you are trying to keep costs down.

That was an idea I had as well. We do have VMWare licenses available so it's definitely a possibility. The main problem with that is that we have nothing in our client site but the network equipment and as of this point, arent allowed to put any permanent PC's or servers there. I considered putting together a virtual image of a backup altiris server onto something portable, but we're still in the boat of figuring out what to run it on HW-wise.

This is definitely an idea though.

I guess my first step in this type of scenario would be to see how they are going to handle the other servers in the environment. Maybe you can follow suit? Otherwise, maybe keeping a laptop/desktop that is ready to go as a backup server?

It looks as though we've finally been given a tiny bit of leeway. Theyre allowing us to use a desktop PC. That changes everything. We could use a VMWare server setup, or we could just straight install it as a package server with dslibrary.

So can you use the desktop as a PS, replaicate images and driver sets with dslibrary, then utilize %SITE% token to pull the HII image. Or you could script a case statement to check the ip to determine which mount point to pull the image from.

Whether you have the PS or not you can still use something like %SITE% for the name of the local share or a PS. I manage over a hundred locations this way. Each happens to have a PS, but that isn't absolutely required. /mnt/ds is (\\dsserver\express) and /mnt/ds2 is (\\packagserver\express which has everything I need repliacted with dslibrary) This way requires you set the %SITE% for each PC you image, which takes about 2 seconds

You don't have to use dslibrary for your software. Make packages on your NS for the software and then modify the default destination to \\%computername%\share. Don't create a job for the package and it will just repliacte to your PS then. This will replicate the software out the same way as dslibrary does.

asbmount the \\%SITE%\share as say /mnt/ds2 or something then rdeployt from that.

More examples for using the ip instead of a %SITE% token http://altirigos.com/vbulletin...pting-tips-tricks.html

Related to this - The original test at building an image over a 2.7MB WAN failed out... has anyone had success or specific troubles with building machines over a slow connection? Are there secret tweaks or changes that help? Tried using DOS and Linux preboot.

Why build it over the link? Have them get you a demo mdel or something to test with. Make it HII locally then you just need to replicate drivers to firm in. Either way be sure to use IIS with package servers so transfers can be resumed. They cannot be resumed if you replicate with UNC paths.

Thanks for the altirigos link, I've seen it before but hadnt read it in the context of what we're talking about doing here. I've got the KB info on the site token, looks pretty easy to set up.

Considering that this will be a desktop workstation and not a server, I'm assuming performance wise that going the local store route will be a faster deployment method than a full VMWare setup?

I can't say on the performance. Unfortunately, with the desktop OS you probably won't be able to use IIS which means you need a pretty stable link, either slow or fast.

quote:

---

Originally posted by: schieb
Why build it over the link? Make it HII locally then you just need to replicate drivers to firm in. Either way be sure to use IIS with package servers so transfers can be resumed. They cannot be resumed if you replicate with UNC paths.

---

We argued from the beginning that building it over the link was going to be inefficient at best. I was just curious if it is feasable. We do have some remote sites that do not have local servers. I'm leery of doing anything like imaging to a PC at a site like that, but it would nice to have that option.

Cant we run IIS from XP? Altiris in our environment falls under desktop support, so my in depth knowledge of the server side of things is shallow. If limitations on the XP version prevent us from running the PS, then I suppose we could run a VMWare installation of the PS, and have the image store shared out from the HD.

I guess you can run IIS on XP but I have never tried that.