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Symantec Software Management 7.1 Best Practices, Part 8 

Sep 06, 2011 12:19 PM

Tracking Deployments
   Task Server Statuses
   Provided Reports
Conclusion

Tracking Deployments

After you've setup your Quick or Managed Deliveries, now you need the ability to track the deployments. This can be accomplished in two basic ways: Task Server Status grids, and the Software Management Reports. Both methods provide insight into the degree of success for a quick deployment or a Managed deployment.

Task Server Statuses

The status grid and drilldowns provided by Task Server are not available for Managed Delivery. The main reason for this is that the Tasks executed during a Managed Delivery are not initiated from the server, but are client-initiated tasks. This leaves Quick Delivery as the consumer of this feature.

To demonstrate how this works, I'll use the test deployment of SQL 2008 previously configured. In this example I want to check to see how the Quick Delivery Task operated.

  1. In the Symantec Management Console, browse under Manage > Jobs and Tasks.
  2. Browse down through Jobs and Tasks > System Jobs and Tasks > Software > Quick Delivery.
  3. When you select your Task, in this example SQL 2008, you'll receive the following screen:

  4. As seen, this deployment failed.
  5. Double-click on the scheduled instances to drill down into this instance.
  6. This gives you a more in-depth view of statuses. If this rollout had multiple target computers, you'd have the ability to see status per resource. See this screenshot for an example:

  7. To receive all status information for a particular execution attempt, drill down by double-clicking on the row desired.
  8. The following screenshot demonstrates this screen:

  9. As you can see, the Task was terminated based on the execution time exceeding the Task timeout value set under the Advanced Settings.

For tasks, this grid system allows you to view the status at multiple layers, with greater granularity the further you drill down.

Provided Reports

Reports offer flexibility in how you want to view the results of a managed or quick deployment. The following reports are available for use in tracking deployments.

For Task Server Quick Delivery reports, they are found in the Symantec Management Console under Reports > All Reports > Software > Delivery (some reports contained in the root) > and Status.

NOTE: These are for Quick Delivery Tasks only:

  • Software Delivery - Download Status
  • Software Delivery - Download Summary
  • Software Delivery - Execution Attempts
  • Software Delivery - Execution Failures
  • Software Delivery - Execution Status
  • Software Delivery - Execution Summary
  • Status > Quick Delivery Details by Task
  • Status > Quick Delivery Details by Computer
  • Status > Software Delivery - Status (All Instances)
  • Status > Software Delivery - Summary (All Executions)

Obviously some reports are better than others for giving you an idea how compliant your target systems are. For my example I will use the Software Delivery - Execution Status in tracking the previous SQL rollout.

  1. Load the report Status > Software Delivery - Status (All Instances).
  2. Change the date range to start at the date you initially configured and rolled out your task.
  3. If necessary, choose a specific Task to track. In my example I only had 2 and left the field as All.
  4. Click Refresh.
  5. See the following screenshot for the results:

  6. Manipulate the parameters as needed to tune your results. Most of the reports listed above have the same parameters.

For Managed Software Delivery Policies, the Reports are found in the Symantec Management Console under Reports > All Reports > Software > Compliance. The following reports are available:

  • Software Compliance by Computer
  • Software Compliance by Managed Delivery Policy
  • Software Compliance Detailed Summary
  • Software Compliance Details by Computer
  • Software Compliance Details by Managed Delivery Policy
  • Software Compliance Remediation Summary
  • Software Compliance Status
  • Software Compliance Summary

These reports fit the nature of a Managed Delivery Policy. For example browse to the report: Software Compliance Summary. I've included all MSDs I've deployed in the example shown in the screenshot below:

Other reports provide more specific details for any given MSD. Review them all to find the one that gives you the best representation of the data you require.

Conclusion

I hope this best practices article helps ease you into the use of Software Management on the Symantec Management Platform 7.0. As new versions are released, some of this information may become out of date. Keep this in mind if you come across a screen you see or a step that doesn't fit. I don't anticipate large changes between now and even the 7.1 release.

Return to Symantec Software Management 7.1 Best Practices, Part 7

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Mar 26, 2014 06:39 AM

Does this still pertain to 7.5?

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