How do you handle maintain monthly third party installs?
I am sure everyone deals with updating third party tools on some schedule. By third party tools, I am referring to Adobe Reader, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Oracle Java, Video VLC, etc. How do you handle the monthly download, testing, and packaging of these tools? At UserKon 2018, I learned of Ketarin, which has helped streamline the process, instead of needing to each product's website. With the use of Ketarin, I have the downloads going into each of their own folders and then a PowerShell script that calls a silent install script for each software title. After double-checking that everything works will on a test VM, I package the directory into a zip that is uploaded to the K2000 (SDA).
What is your process? Is there an easier way to automate this? Is there a better tool (for free or for cost)?
Answers (2)
Do you have a k1000? I update my master image which has the basics in the image (asst Adobe products, Firefox, Chrome, Java, etc) every couple of months,. In between when they pull an image down for admin staff the K1000 patching handles it.
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Yes, we have a K1000. At current count, I have 29 Windows 10 WIM images. If I were to update them each month or two, I'm not sure how much other work I would be able to get done. From my view, it seems that it would take less time to maintain a post install task of third party tools than updating images each month. - AAnschutz 5 years ago
I use a scripting install with the SDA to have a basic OS with basic settings on the systems.
The SMA installs nessesary software as MI/Script depending on the needs of the systems.
If a new major version is out which should be avaiable on the systems (also software which can be updated in the patch catalog!) I update the MI/Script and bind it on an additional label which contains below versions .
Usually once per month this is done.
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I guess that pushes into another question I have had for a while but not asked. What seems to be the advantage of having the base OS as a scripted install over a WIM/System Image?
Our K1000 is already pushing out lots of updates for Windows, agent updates, and etc. Why burden it with updating a system that was just imaged? - AAnschutz 5 years ago
