Automated software deployment

Soldato
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How do you guys manage automated software deployments and updates in your enterprise?

We used to use WPKG in my old company, but this will be a HUGE undertaking for a single admin of 60 odd machines.
 
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Hmm thanks guys!!

My manager suggested we use GPO. But SCCM could be a possibility if it's free.

Thanks for the Octopus recommendation too.

I'll take a look.

We use SCCM but it certainly isn't free! unless it's in your enterprise agreement (120 day trial available though), and has a bit of a large learning curve attached to it!
GPO's are OK and nothing more for most installers that are .msi packages but sketchy for anything else.
 
Soldato
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Yea. The solution needs to be free.

Now it makes sense why my previous, manager opted for WPKG.

Our requirements don't need to be elaborate or complicated. We just need a way of rolling out updates to common applications in an automated way rather than doing everything by hand.
 
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I'm assuming windows; but for 60 machines it doesn't seem like a big requirement; updates can be done via WSUS policies; software installed via GPO and configurations forced used something like Desire State Configurations perhaps.

If you want to get a little more "down with the kids" - Maybe even bundle in something like https://chocolatey.org/ or http://boxstarter.org into the mix. All free, or install on existing kit (assuming windows infra).
 
Soldato
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Big user of PDQ Deploy and PDQ Inventory here, best money we've ever spent, spent a fair amount of time with Shane and the other devs to put some really good features in.

We rely on it massively since we decommissioned SCCM 2007 a while ago.

Unfortunately it's not free, but to get anything good you're going to have to pay i'm afraid
 
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Soldato
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At the moment my biggest project is to set up a WDS server and get a netbootable Win 10 image on the system.

I'm half way there. I've got the WDS server serving images over tftp. My next step is to sysprep an image.

As far as I understand it, I can set up the image exactly including apps and then sysprep it and this will become the base image I will host on the WDS server.

Of course over time the base set of applications in the image will be out of date, when a new machine boots for the first time.

Do you think GPO will work in this sort of scenario?

The applications are simple:

Chrome
Firefox
Skype
Office 2016 (will be part of image but updates handled by WSUS)
VLC
Xnview

---

As a side note, we currently have a KMS server working which activates both Win 10 and Office 2016.

I'm not concerned about Win 10, but will the KMS server still be able to activate Office 2016 if it is part of the base image I sysprep?

I'm assuming the answer is yes as the purpose of sysprep is to strip the machine of any identifying information.
 
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At the moment my biggest project is to set up a WDS server and get a netbootable Win 10 image on the system.

As a side note, we currently have a KMS server working which activates both Win 10 and Office 2016.

I'm not concerned about Win 10, but will the KMS server still be able to activate Office 2016 if it is part of the base image I sysprep?

I'm assuming the answer is yes as the purpose of sysprep is to strip the machine of any identifying information.

You can use the unattended answer file to apply a kms client key to windows and office, and activate them for you. Office will require an additional kms install on the server for office activations.

Do note that it won't activate until you get 5 Office activation requests and I think Windows activations was 25. I use a KMS emulator to make the initial requests normally as sysprep doesn't always leave you with a unique office ID.

If you need any WDS client/image unattend help, I've just finished a custom W10 Education build.
 
Soldato
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You can use the unattended answer file to apply a kms client key to windows and office, and activate them for you. Office will require an additional kms install on the server for office activations.

Do note that it won't activate until you get 5 Office activation requests and I think Windows activations was 25. I use a KMS emulator to make the initial requests normally as sysprep doesn't always leave you with a unique office ID.

If you need any WDS client/image unattend help, I've just finished a custom W10 Education build.


There are many different things I could use to get the next step completed.

But I was going to set up a VM install all the applications and settings and then sysprep it which will then become the base image I will deploy via WDS.

Should work.... from the videos I've been watching! :D

 
Soldato
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ugh :) dont install application in an image! unless you never intend to use it again down the line as it will be horribly out of date.

Write some scripts to install the software unattended from a network share and use Runonce to call them.
It adds a bit of time to the build time of each one but as your using wds, multicasting works quite well.
 
Soldato
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ugh :) dont install application in an image! unless you never intend to use it again down the line as it will be horribly out of date.

Write some scripts to install the software unattended from a network share and use Runonce to call them.
It adds a bit of time to the build time of each one but as your using wds, multicasting works quite well.

Yea. I agree. But is it not better for the image to come with a base set of applications and then you can still make your calls to scripts/GPO to install/update applications?
 
Soldato
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Windows updates perhaps (we also script these to keep the base image to a min) but not applications, your relying on the old versions removing themselves neatly. IMO its best just to keep your deploy folder up to date with the latest. (this is just my opinion of course :))


Deployments are one of those things you want to do well as it will save an awful lot of ballache down the line if there is something slightly amiss in your image and you find you have to re-image much to everyone's delights :)

Pretty sure Win10 sysprep is slightly broken if you remove certain apps, just something to be aware of :)

dism is an awesome tool if you want to learn more on the innards of OS's
 
Soldato
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I've had a chat with one of the senior engineers here and we've decided to take out of the base image all the software that is frequently updated and only put in the stuff that is rarely changed.

That way we can manage it better via another solution.

Now I need to look at SCCM or PDG Deploy etc....
 
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