Scripted install takes a long time to complete
Hi, We have been using KACE for two years now, very satisfied, but we are having trouble running scripted installs on +/- 40 pc's simultaneously. It takes about 7.5 hours to complete the whole scripted install. We are using the following configuration:
- Remote K2000 Box
- Windows 7 SP1
When running the scripted install, all PC's seem to hang for 6 hours on the "Installing updates" and "completing installation" check marks in the Windows 7 install. During that period, there is almost no network and disk activity.
I guess something goes wrong in the install, but no PC's ever fails. It just lasts very, very long, how can this be?
Regards,
Xander.
Answers (2)
When you say "remote K2000 box", does this mean that it's on a different network (or site) than the machines that are running the scripted install, or are you referring to an RSA? If it's the former, the time involved may come down to the machines copying the files for the scripted install and the bandwidth being maxed out at some point (which would mean each machine is only getting a slow trickle). Even if the K2000 is local, I would imagine that running ~40 simultaneous installs would cause things to run slowly (from "a bit" to possibly "significantly") as *somewhere* the pipe is getting bottlenecked (either on the K2000 disks, network interface, connected switch fabric, etc). A couple things you could try to see if any of these might be the cause:
1) Check the logs/stats on the K2000 while the scripted installs are running to see if any resources are getting maxed out.
2) Run a scripted install to a single machine and see if the time is any different.
3) (If the K2000 is truly remote), run a scripted install to a single *local* machine and see if the time is any different.
Assuming the scripted install doesn't have any inherent issues (like scripts/programs trying to reach resources that are unavailable), I would first suspect file copies *somewhere* in the chain causing this to take so long. Just for point of reference, I run simultaneous scripted installs (on the same network segment my K2000 is on), with all updates copying down, all 3rd party apps being installed & multiple defrags run, and it takes ~1.5 hours to complete (even on older machines).
Another point of reference - one time when I was a network consultant, I was installing/replacing a DC at a customer site and the company's network admin and I realized that none of the sites' computers were current on Windows updates (and they needed to be for some part of the install process that I can't recall at the moment). Anyways, for each machine that kicked off Windows update scans/downloads, the download speed dropped for all of the others (since they were all sharing the same pipe). At one point, we cancelled the updates for most of the machines (as when all were downloading the speed was so slow that none of them would have finished for literally days) and just did them in small groups. If you play out the scenarios above and find that running a scripted install to a single machine completes as expected, you might just try deploying to smaller groups (or upgrade your pipes).
John
John
It has always slowed down for me at greated than 30 machines. I would make sure both your K2 and RSAs are up to date.
You can also vote here http://kace.uservoice.com/forums/82717-k2000/suggestions/1169859-faster-simultaneous-deployment
