Client Management Suite

Hi,

In DS 6.9, we had a stock job for re-imaging loan laptops. The job would sit waiting for a batch of machines to appear on the network and then, when one did, begin processing. The last item in the list used an error code to re-trigger the first item and the job would then wait for the machine to appear again.

We're now trying to do something similar in Deployment in 7.6 and haven't yet worked out a way of doing it. If we schedule a job for a certain time each day it waits for an hour or so and if the machine doesn't appear it times out and gives up. Are we missing a trick?

Thanks in advance,

Martin

Hi Martin.

You can use the Initial Deployment to do that. In Altiris Console, go to Settings > Deployment > Initial Deployment. Select your deploy image job and don't forget to check the option "Run Default Job immediately".

When a new machine loads the WinPe, the InitialDeployment will send the default Job to the machine automatically and it's done. You will only a guy to boot the machine via PXE or pen drive. After the boot the magic happens automatically.

Regards,

Ah - thanks for that. Unfortunately though, that's a global solution for all unknown or managed computers isn't it? I should have said that we require this functionality to apply to a subset of machines...

Regards

Martin

It's not what you're asking for, but we set up initial and re-deployment menus as we often reimage machines.  Technician PXE boots machines and then chooses the image and walks away & comes back in 40 mins or so and image is completed.  It takes about 3 mins of time to kick off the process.  

Edit: also, you may want to submit your item as an idea over here

Hi Martin,

This sounds like something that would be useful to us - however we wouldn't want it to trigger unless the laptop was plugged into a WIRED network port.  Is this what you did?  We wouldn't want it to trigger if the students connected to wifi for instance!  Let me know if you manage to find a solution...

A starting point?

https://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/workflow-run-jobstasks-when-machine-connects-network

I've not got a system in front of me but can you not change the timeout of Tasks now?

Not sure about Martin, but we could have laptops out on loan for over 2 weeks.  That a long time to have a deployment job running.  Also once the deployment job runs for that particular laptop, you'd then still have to re-schedule it manually.  I think what is needed is a policy to say "if THESE devices appear in THIS IP range, then run THIS task".

You can "Exclude Computers not In" your IP range in the Target.

It is currently only triggered for the loan laptops when they're connected to wired ports, as you suspected.

Ours are also out for weeks on end. The sad thing is this is functionality we had working in DS 6.9. The job was automatically rescheduled just before completion and then it sat there waiting patiently for the machine to reappear on the LAN.

All makes we wonder whether we should have looked at GSS rather than moving to deployment in 7.x...

You can "Exclude Computers not In" your IP range in the Target.

Just to clarify - which target is that?

Thanks

The Target of your Managed Software Delivery Policy.

A support case has suggested we could achieve what we want by using the "initial deployment" settings on a dedicated site server assigned to a particular subnet. I can see that this would work but it's far from an ideal solution as we'd need to dedicate a "spare" site server and be careful what other imaging we attempted to do on that subnet(s)...

I must be missing something here. I'm talking about imaging not MSDs?

Martin

Can you not put the Imaging Tasks inside a Managed Software Delivery Policy?

Hmmm.  Definitely not ideal and I don't think we'd be interested in doing that either.  A lot of effort into achieving something so simple!  I'm gonna test the "scheduled policy" method when I get chance...