which deployment tool ?

[Sn00f]

Hi, I work in a school and we would like to buy or try a deployment tool.

We have 600+ machines actually on w2k, several hardware, and several variety of software.

Users have user rights, some power user rights...

We actually use Norton Ghost 7.5 Corporate edition, but this doesn't do all the job we want.

Is there a simple tool for deploy patches, hotfixes (kbXXXXXX, qXXXXXX )on client machines without tell the user to click somewhere or do something. They just don't have to do anything ( don't even see what happens if this exists (silent install)). And also we would like to know if these patches were deployed or not (logs or something like that).

I'm new to this technology, and didn't try another tool than ghost.

Could someone help me please?

Thanks in advance.

[hrp2171]

Check out this article:

http://www.nwc.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=18402738

And check out this Google search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=windows+pat...=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Also, you might qualify for a free subscription to Network Computing magazine.

[ButlerKevinD]

Hi, I work in a school and we would like to buy or try a deployment tool.

We have 600+ machines actually on w2k, several hardware, and several variety of software.

Users have user rights, some power user rights...

We actually use Norton Ghost 7.5 Corporate edition, but this doesn't do all the job we want.

Is there a simple tool for deploy patches, hotfixes (kbXXXXXX, qXXXXXX )on client machines without tell the user to click somewhere or do something. They just don't have to do anything ( don't even see what happens if this exists (silent install)). And also we would like to know if these patches were deployed or not (logs or something like that).

I'm new to this technology, and didn't try another tool than ghost.

Could someone help me please?

Thanks in advance.

Using Software Updates Services on an existing Win2k/Win2k3 server can deploy all of the critical updated needed by your workstations. To be more granular, Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 will do the same as well as the non-critical updates. Ghost really only works well if the machines are of the same hardware type, and as you stated, some are, some aren't. With the SUS and SMS2k3, you can have the updates sent to the workstations without user intervention if i am not mistaken. SUS really dosen't keep easy to read logs of what updates were deployed, but SMS2k3 does have reporting capablilites with it. Hope this helps.

[Sn00f]

thank you for your help.

I didn't know there were so many tools like that lol, think I got some days to read all that mess

I'll give backup as soon as I have answers :-)

BBL :-)

[Miphnik]

You might want to give Altiris's line of product a look over.

www.altiris.com

[Sn00f]

Sorry for this late answer, I forgot the post :/

My company finaly decided to buy Norton ghost corporate 8.0, which is not the best I think, but anyway...

I have to use this one ;-)

[oioldman]

I can highly recommend a product called Criston Precision.

Very simple to use, does everyting you want, inc

S/W & H/W inventory

software install / removal

remote control

direct access of pc to change registry, services, hdd

I use to deploy to over 500+ PC and never a glitch

I know another company uses it ffor 35000, (yes that is correct), PC's.

go to http://criston.com for further info

[jarod670]

We just started using Sysprep with Ghost and have been pretty happy so far. If you have just one image that you need to deploy to different hardware platforms this works great. I work in a hospital, and have about 10 different models to work with. We made one base image, then push all of the updates out with SUS. We are looking forward to finally getting Active Directory up and using more of the server 2k3 tools.

[jshaw]

Hey, if you have nt4, 2000,2003 servers, then you can use a tool caled RIS (Remote Installation Services). You just type in risetup.exe into the run box at the start menu. If you use nt4server (this only works on nt4server) you can goto start ->run-> and type ncadmin.exe

If you have the nt4 server disk, you can then goto the i386 folder on the cd and copy all the files in the directory that inclue the name ncadmin.

Then copy all the files to a seperate folder on your hard drive and type in the start, run box <path to files> expand ncadmin.exe

<all versions>

Then just follow the step by step instructions but in ncadmin, select make network boot disk (or something to that effect).