Intel,Altiris Group

A little background on what we are doing. We use Wise Package Studio and SMS to delpoy our applications Enterprise wide. We are trying to come up with a workflow or methodology for archiving older software off our application shares on the network.

We will not be implementing any new server or software to accomplish this task as it is not in the budget at this time. Does anyone have any workflow processes or methodologies they are currently using for this and would be willing to share?

We are thinking about archiving to DVD for now. We have alot of applications that have been sunsetted but we need to retain them for compliance reasons. There is no need to waste SAN storage for the archives as that is a costly solution.

 

If anyone has any ideas or workflow processes or methodologies they would be willing to share, please post them here.

 

Regards,

 

Kevin Elwell

Do you have any application lifecycle documentation for your existing application inventory? That would be a logical starting place, as your documentation could be updated to show that the application has been retired, and removed from Software Manager in WPS. The application in question can then be archived to CD or DVD, together with a copy of the lifecycle documentation, and stored in your software repository.

If you have other compliance requirements, you could also record the output of a system wide scan of your workstations to show that the application has been uninstalled completely, and therefore no active licences are still deployed. This may be relevant should any of your software be licenced annually or by head count.

We do have documentation for application lifecycles and once we get word the application is being sunsetted, we update our documentation and mark the application as "not available". We are not currently using the software manager in WPS  at this time. We are not able to get funding to upgrade to the Enterprise version at this time, however we want to go that route.

I was looking to see if anyone had a system in place that they used for software archiving other than the software manager, somthing geared to the process of what files they kept, directory structures, naming conventions of directories, etc. We need to free up several hundred gigs of diskspace and move the older versions/sunsetted applications to DVD.

Eventually we are hoping to to upgrade to WPS 7.03 Enterprise, and utilize all the functionality of the tools. We just upgraded to WPS 7.03 from WPS 7.00.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Kevin Elwell

If I can assume that you are using project folders in the Wise Share Point, then I would suggest archiving the project folders of retired apps unmodified.

Then, if you need to reinstate an application for any reason, you can just restore the project folder to the share point and go from there.

You could also consider zipping the project folders to save DVD space.

Alternatively, what about sourcing a 1Tb external USB drive, and dumping your retired apps on there. That can be stored as easily as a pile of DVDs and be easier to manage.

I'm not entirely sure I see the difference in "Information Protection" between locked an external hard disk in your cabinet, and locking up the software in its native CD or DVD format. I trust that you would only be locking up the software and not company confidential data, so it's more an issue of Intellectual Property Rights rather than Information Protection.

Frankly, my attitude to these groups is to ask them how they want it done, then ask them to fund it, if their suggestion does not follow the lowest cost "common sense" route.

It's amazing how a potential hit on their budget can result in a refocusing of priorities. Never ever overlook the cost issue when making your case for the common sense approach.

While that would be a awesome solution, our Information Protection groups would have a fit if we did that. We currently use network storage for our applications. And that is secured via AD group policies, so anyone that does not need access to our files cannot get to them. We have some older software locked up in cabinets now, for now that is what we will do until we can find a better solution.

 

I appreciate all your suggestions and advice, thank you very much!

 

Kevin Elwell

I understand what you are saying. However the rules are the rules here. I agree with what you are saying. I appreciate all your advice. We will come up with something that works for us. Thank you again for all your input and advice.

Regards,

Kevin Elwell

Hi Kevin,
Do you need to archive code?

We will be archiving code as well as vendor files, vendor msi/exe, wse, captured msi/wsi, etc.

Kevin

Hi Kevin,
Do you need to archive code?