Software Deployment

We use Altiris. It's very easy and a good one

skj,

To get the best recommendations, provide as much information as possible about your environment and your budget. Otherwise, you will find the number of responses low and possibly not as helpful.

For example: Bytehunter makes a very good recommendation with Altiris. Many businesses, though, find the cost of Altiris out of reach. If you budget does allow for this kind of expenditure, then someone recommending Active Directory/Group Policy might not make as much sense when you can do and control so much more with Altiris.


Craig --<>.

Hi,

I agree. Altiris is probably the most complete and concise solution for application delivery, and lifecycle management. It provides a solution for most business requirements and can highly recommend, however this comes at a price.

Altiris allows for a 30 day free tril of all their products so just have a look at the website - let me know if you need more info and I will get one of the team to give you a call.

Of course you also have the oppotuinty of using GPO for remote deployment of MSI's. There is LANDESK, SMS to name but a few.....

I'm not trying to be biased but in my experince the overall completeness of Altiris gives it the edge......

Regards

hehe - good answers all around - although I still prefer, if you already have AD in your network, using GPOs to deploy apps - it's essentially free :)

Thanks everbody for your valuable suggesstion....

Cheers

Do you support a hetergeneous environment? Would you like to manage Handhelds, Linux workstations, Windows boxes, and have the most robust and scalable directory available?

Zenworks.

It can manage and deploy to handhelds (Ipaq, Blackberry, Palm etc), Linux workstations, Windows machines, includes server management ... the list goes on. By far the most flexible, robust and scalable deployment solution available.

Not the cheapest though :)

Ugh - I ran into ZenWorks at Daimler-Chrystler - I did not care for it...

Just my opinion.

ZEN is a different world but it does have some strengths.

Does anyone here use Novadigm or what has been merged in Openview? I read that it was a really strong and expensive platform. Is it really all that?

Hi Sean,

I'd be interested what features of Zen you didn't care for, what about it gave you that reaction? One that I get a lot from people more attuned to the MS way of doing things is usually just a familiarity gap to breach, similar to what I had when I moved from NAL packaging to MSI, and moving from NDS/ZEN to AD/Altiris/GPO/other-deployment-platforms.

Your experience of Zen depends greatly on the version of Zen that was being used. Its certainly a different way of thinking than most other deployment platforms.

But I'd like to hear what about it you didn't like, in case my familiarity with it has blinded me to some of its faults (*cough* ConsoleOne)

Paul

I've used Zen and SMS and both were effective. I thought Zen was easier, but SMS does the job well too.

KKaminsk - I used Novadigm at an old job, but only briefly. I'm still friends with that team though, and they've chosen to keep Novadigm over the other options they weighed, namely SMS and Tivoli. It really can do all that.

We use CA Unicenter. I know, we're weird. I think it's because the CIO had a good game of golf with a CA guy, it was here when I showed up. It's a good product, integrates well with other CA apps such as service desk, knowledge base. My big issue with it is that it's SO versatile, you can do things in SO many different ways, you're constantly wondering if you're doing it the BEST way or if you'll run into a gotcha by doing something in that particular way. Kinda makes you feel like Linus without his security blanket.

Anyway, I'm a Zen fan. I like it's approach of extending the network tree down to the workstation and app. Then again, I've only used it on a Novell NDS network. On an AD network, I'll reserve judgement until I see it. Microsoft play nice with Novell? Next think you know cats & dogs will be sleeping together.

I'm with you Loki -

I like Novell, but only in an NDS tree. In an AD environment, I'll go with Group Policy if it's small or SMS 2003 if it's big.

Depends on how much you need to manage - sometimes, in a small environment, it's just easier to walk to the desk and fix it :-)

I have used many big name products out there. I'm currently using CA SD and I have to say the gui front end is nice. That is all I have to say about the product.

Tivoli Software distribution was good until Tivoli screwed it up.

If you want a robust, highend system that can manage down to the bits than Radia is for you. I have used Radia extensively for 3 years and it can out run everything I've seen so far. It has it's issues but support and service is great. CA support.....not even close.

Novadigm
Nice to see there's a lot of support out there for Novadigm and its flagship product, Radia. Unfortunately, my company's experience with it was not so positive.

We are a large organization (100,000+ nodes) and had a major Radia deployment in CA, which was to be the "model" example for other regions. Now, keep in mind that we had already been a major user of Novadigm's previous packaging/deployment product, EDM, and our positive experience with EDM helped sell us on Radia. After 2 years of careful planning, implementation and feedback, we eventually had to pull the plug and go with another solution (Tivoli, which btw comes with its own serious issues).

Main lessons learned:
1. If you're going with Radia, I DO NOT recommend using the native "desired state" repackaging tool. Instead, package your applications into an MSI using one of the more robust/reliable tools out there (WISE, InstallShield, etc.), then use Radia as your delivery/deployment/infrastructure tool. Anyone who has ever tried deploying a "desired state" Radia package in a Windows environment quickly learns about the DLL ping-pong hell that results.

2. If you work in a HIGHLY standardized/controlled environment where IT management actually has much say-so over what gets installed on the desktop (and how), then your odds of success with any Novadigm product are much higher. If on the other hand, you work in a highly mixed, non-standardized environment, then you will probably be better off with a different tool (Altiris, SMS, etc.).

3. I'd have serious qualms about depending too heavily on a vendor that rips out core functionality from one version to the next. Example: file-folder & registry permission resets mysteriously stopped working when we upgraded from 2.x to 3.x. When our packages started bombing, my manager confronted our Novadigm rep, who told him, "We had some reliability problems with that so we took it out." Nice, huh?

I agree with your comments.

Viewers please realize when you compare vendor products. Compare Apples to Apples and Oranges to Oranges. If you want to deploy and execute, you can do that with any tool. If you want some sort of mgmt than you must compare the vendors that offer the technology.

In response to bullet number 1.
This desire state tool is basically using the "Snap Shot" technology that everyone uses. Nothing more, nothing less. However, once the resources are in the database you can manage the bits. The industry standard is msi...therefore one should look for an msi packaging solution. From what I have seen so far Radia is the only technology that can actually manage the msi application as well.

In response to number 2.
I have used SMS in a large environment. It does not scale. Plane and simple. If you want deployments to trickle down to the clients than this is the solution for you. If you want immediate deployment, good luck.

One additional response....

Novadigm's edm upgrade to Radia was terrible. Once you're in Radia it is alot better.
IBM Software distribution upgrade to Tivoli software distribution....terrible.
SMS 1.2 to SMS 2.0 upgrade....oh my god.
CA 3 to 4 upgrade....what upgrade path....

It should be noted that SMS 2.0 to 2003 is far less painful.

I was part of a team that deployed SMS 2.0 when Win2K was in beta. You want to talk about extreme pain. We had about three team members dedicated to stabilizing SMS on Win2K. All that fun just to be the world's largest deployment of Win2K in North America at release date. Never again...

Not trying to knock Radia as a delivery/infrastructure tool, but it's native repackaging tool and desired-state/file arbitration methodology leaves something to be desired, at least where non-MSI installs are concerned.

At the time of our EDM-to-Radia deployment/migration (3+ years ago) Windows Installer was not the gold standard it is today (at least not as much), so we didn't go that route. Desired-state/file arbitration was heavily promoted as a big deal, but actually turned out to be our Achilles heel in the end.
With MSIs, it's the Windows Installer service --not Radia-- that manages the client install, so maybe we would have had better results.