Video Screencast Help
Search Video Help Close Back
to help

Endpoint Management Community Blog

Showing posts in English
1 week in
Tim.Jing | 14 Jan 2013 | 5 comments

Items completed:

3 SMP servers, 1 parent, 2 child with hierchy completed.

SQL maintenence plan created per Symantec recommendations.

AD import completed.

Subnets manually created(We are using the 8 scheme which would have been tough to import)

Tested PCAnywhere functions, decent product, not very good at screen aspect ratios for such a mature product. Very bare bones?

Only issues are: 1 server had to be respun in VM and rebuilt becuase of various strange errors with SMP agent. Also some Java oddities when importing OS files, which thankfully can be bypassed by simply pressing cancell to the credential challenge(This was on XP and 7 desktops with the Symantec's proposed GP configuration in palce. But that error still persisted, attached is the photo of the error, on an XP machine you can press cancell and continue with the file upload).

The design of the product still irks me a bit for the options on Site Servers. Even with fiber...

Read more
Preserving Application Customizations when installing software updates
Michael Grueber | 11 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

A common issue that administrators face when managing the software update process involves situations in which:

  • An application was originally installed with customized settings;
  • The vendor releases an update to the application in the form of an installation that installs a completely new version of the application rather than just incrementally updating just those files that are affected by a security vulnerability or bug

In such cases, the update packages created by application vendors often are not sophisticated enough to preserve the customizations that were made when the application was originally installed.

For example, an adminstrator may roll out Adobe Reader 9.4.0 using the .MSI provided by the vendor together with an .MST transform file that customizes the application's settings (e.g. turning off the auto-update feature).  If the administrator later uses the Patch Management...

Read more
Altiris 7.1 migration, Day 3
Tim.Jing | 09 Jan 2013 | 2 comments

A few days in to the migration, have some questions came up. So lets go through it.

Our infrustructure is more like 1 huge building than 80 separate sites. The availability of having fiber connected to all the sattalite campuses means we can centrally manage as if they were in the same building. The problem is SMP isnt really designed for that kind of infrustructure. And the few issues we encountered are:

1. The technicians cannot manage the infrustructure in real time from 1 console. The amount of our clients meant we had to use hierchy, which means teh Parent server sees things later(Synch schedule). While all synched machines will be on the Parent server, any new clients will take 24 hours for the Parent console to see. Which means no OOB deployment from the parent Console.

2. Replication of packages maybe required as Task Servers, which means we would have to replicate our packages atleast 5 times(5 Task Servers). We dont need that as our San can handle the...

Read more
Altiris/SMP Best Practices Webinar
Rae Landua | 08 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

 

Altrinsic Solutions and NetX are offering a free webinar next week on "The Top Five Tricks to Optimize Your Altiris/SMP Environment." You can learn little-known deployment and configuration methods to fully leverage your Altiris investment.  It's filling up quickly so register now to reserve your spot!

 

 

http://www.netxinc.com/emails/tips_and_tricks_webinar/tipsandtricks.html

Read more
The Power of Apps
Joe G. | 07 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

Back in 2007, Apple were enjoying almost unlimited success with sales of the already successful iPod, when they went a step further and released a smart device called the iPhone. This changed everything.

In much the same way as Ikea changed the way we viewed flat pack furniture, no longer would we be satisfied with phones that just made calls and texts and accessed a bit of WAP (anyone remember that?)

The ‘App’ as we know it was born. Would Facebook be as hugely popular as it is now were it not for the excellent mobile app? The ability to check in, to update your status on the move, and to share photos when out and about? Possibly, but nowhere near as prominent and accessible as it is now.

And accessibility is the point I am making. Back in 2007 and 2008, who would’ve thought that Apple, market leaders and innovators, could have gained and then lost so much market share to a competitor in the very space it invented?

I am, of course,...

Read more
Microsoft Privilege Exploitation in 2012
mmurphy7 | 02 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

 

With the new year upon us, time for Arellia’s 2012 analysis of Microsoft vulnerabilities and those with privilege exploitation:

Bulletins 83
Vulnerabilities 172
Bulletins with Privilege Exploitations 40
Vulnerabilities with Privilege Exploitations 87
% of Bulletins with Privilege Exploitation 48.2%
% of Vulnerabilities with...
Read more
Altiris Vs SCCM 2007
Ashish-Sharma | 02 Jan 2013 | 1 comment

Hi,

Someone asked, 

What is difference between Altiris Vs SCCM ?

What Can I do with altiris ?

Attached Document explain Briefly difference between Altiris Vs SCCM 2007.

 

Source:

http://myitforum.com/cs2/files/folders/comparedocs...

Read more
A new Symantec.pl.xml was released 2012-12-21 (SD 7.5.1)
Ludovic Ferre | 02 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

It looks like we tried to push out some update before the worl did _not_ end :D.

File name: symantec.pl.xml
File hash: f66d34f93a3b240f0fa2f908428051b4
File date: 2012-12-20 10:31
File size: 13,727,806 bytes (~14MB)
Release date: 2012-12-21

Additional information:

  • ProductListing definitionName="symantec_v2" majorVersion="7" minorVersion="1" buildVersion="11"
  • Some changes occured in the package tree, as shown below with some prunning being done and Service Desk 7.5.1 being added
--- tree-737a531d1c28c34bd7b73f14e0633578.txt	2013-01-02 12:09:19.000000000 +0100
+++ tree-f66d34f93a3b240f0fa2f908428051b4.txt	2013-01-02 12:12:01.000000000 +0100
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-tree-737a531d1c28c34bd7b73f14e0633578/
+tree-f66d34f93a3b240f0fa2f908428051b4...
Read more
{CWoC-2012} Happy New Year Connect and Patch Tool Kit version bumped to 0.6.7
Ludovic Ferre | 01 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

Happy New Year Symantec and the Connect Community.

Today I updated my patch toolkit ([1][2]) with version 0.6.7, brining in a couple of features ontop of some project consolidation (nothing visible from the end-user standpoint but I have implementing a generic initializer and a config class that allow me to further consolidate the project codes).

Here are the features implemented in 0.6.7:

  • /severity=<severity>|* now has a wildcard token ("*") that allows users to select any severities instead of only one [available in both ZeroDayPAtch.exe and PAtchAutomation.exe]
  • /custom-sp=<sp_name> allows the user to specify a stored procedure name that will be executed [available in PatchAutomation.exe alone]

What's specially interesting in this case (and in the combination of both features) is that it is now possible to generate a result-set to be used in the tool based on what ever the end user want.

The /...

Read more
Performance Tuning for SMP 7.1SP2
HighTower | 26 Apr 2013 | 7 comments

At the last couple of Symantec Endpoint Management User Group meetings I talked about a couple of things that can be done to improve the performance of your Symantec Management Platform.  I figured it would be best to summarize them in the group itself:

  1. The first one I mentioned had to do with changing the Kerberos authentication order in the IIS website from Negotiate > NTLM to NTLM > Negotiate
    http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH156006
     
  2. The second we just ran across this week.  Our 16 core, 24gb RAM SQL server was running a constant 80-90% CPU utilization and we were experiencing frequent deadlocks.  On Sunday, a deadlock/blocking situation corrupted our PMImport and broke Patch.  Very bad things happened.

    In any event, we found that the SQL Tuning guide had been updated by...

Read more