Deployment Solution

I can't find any download for the sp3 or sp4 upgrades for DS 6.9... can anyone point me in the right direction?  Also, any advice for the upgrade procedure would be helpful.  How much stuff will I need to rebuild to get things back up and running?  Will my jobs, tasks, pxe images, etc. stay intact?

I have been trying to wrestle Altiris DS 7.1 SP2 to work as a replacement for 6.9, but it has been taking way too long and is way too buggy so I am seriously considering sticking with 6.9.  Our 6.9 environment is very solid, though, so I'm wary of tampering with it. 

Ok I found the place to download the trialware or whatever, but when I click on the download link I get an access denied message.. help?  Nothing can be simple with Symantec, can it?

Seems to be a known issue and Symantec is working on it.  See this thread here:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/access-denied-downloading-evaluation-altiris-deployment-solutions

You Might wana check the below link

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/upgrading-deployment-solution-ns-solution-center

I eventually got the download to work.

Support pointed me in the direction of this very detailed (ha ha) article: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO7728

Does anyone know what the upgrade of the services, etc. on the site servers looks like?  Any forced reboot, etc. or is it pretty benign?  Our site servers are also file servers so I am trying to determine if this should be work during our scheduled maintenance window or just off hours.

So has anyone done a SP upgrade recently in DS 6.9?

Can I prevent updates being pushed out to the other site/pxe servers until I want them to be?  Our pxe servers at each site are generally file servers so I'd like to be more particular about how/when they are modified if possible.

Will my existing WinPE images be intact or will I need to do something to get imaging back up and running for our existing XP jobs?  I want to consider all of the possible scenarios so I am prepared to address any issues that may arise during the upgrade.  

Since you are stil going to test it I wouldn't upgrade from 6.9. Instead I'd just install DS 7.1 since the agent does not conflict with your DS 6.9. You run them both and see if you are still insterested on doing the upgrade. 

 

I've done an upgrade not too long ago.

its fairly straight forward. Make sure you have a server backup and backup your current PXE folder in your express directory, SQL databases and jobs.

Install the SP to the server, I would do them in order if you can. but SP4 is fine i've been running it for a fair old time and its easy.

Once the install the SP you then need to install the updated PXE components to allow access to the those functions.

you will possibly have to recreate the shared PXE images i can't remember but either way its not too hard to do.

Job done, i know i didnt have any adverse effects on any of the steps from 6.9 through to sp4 granted there were gaps inbetween each for me.

As long as you have server backups you can revert back either way. if its a VM snapshot before you start.

but you should start looking at 7.1 also.

You should really look at going to SP5 and not waste your time with the other v6.9 SP's, SP5 works quite well.

We did end up upgrading to 6.9 SP5 a little while ago.  Things went relatively well after fixing a couple of issues, nothing too major went wrong though.  Way better than trying to do Win 7 imaging in 7.1.