[THIN] Re: Installation Manager vs. Cloning
- From: "Tony Lyne" <Tony.Lyne@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 09:29:34 +1200
One thing you have omitted here is the cost. You have to purchase
enterprise to get it and the difference here between advanced and
enterprise is ridiculous just for IM. Granted there is a big difference
between Advanced and Enterprise now days as compared to XP 1.0 and even
V3.0 for a large number of sites it would be more cost effective to use
something like Altiris Deployment as you can also manage your client
devices from the one console.
Tony Lyne
Consultant
Senior Systems Engineer
+64 6 353 7300
<http://www.gen-i.co.nz>
+64 6 356 6800
+64 27 472 0696
tony.lyne@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:tony.lyne@xxxxxxxxxxx>
www.gen-i.co.nz <http://www.gen-i.co.nz>
172-174 Broadway Avenue, PO Box 1470,
Palmerston North, New Zealand
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________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Rick Mack
Sent: Friday, 16 June 2006 9:02 a.m.
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [THIN] Re: Installation Manager vs. Cloning
Hi Joe,
Gotta disagree with a couple of your comments. Unless your organization
is using something like Altiris already, if you've got the Citrix
enterprise product you should consider using IM.
It does a pretty good job of controlling software installation and
keeping track of what's happened. There are things IM does really well
like letting you co-ordinate software installation and time-based load
balancing so you can maintain 100% farm uptime during a software
installation cycle.
The ability to use multiple packaging/installation technologies from a
single control point isn't real bad either. You can push out MSIs or
other custom installs, registry updates, file updates etc to your Citrix
servers. As an example, you can use it as a front end to update SAPGUI
on demand.
Probably it's biggest drawback is it doesn't record/inventory what's
already installed on a server. So if you clone or even just rename a
server, or move it from your development farm to a production farm,
you've got no record of what's been installed on that server. It doesn't
let you modify all the package properties, so the easiest way to
modify/update a package is to remove it and re-add it in the management
console. That loses all the IM information in the datastore for that
piece of software on your servers.
It's actually not that hard to get the IM-installed software inventory
off a system, but I'm not aware of any way to pump that into the
datastore. So the IM interface doesn't have a reliable way of telling
you exactly what's been installed on a server.
But if it did have an inventory capability, it'd actually be pretty darn
good.
regards,
Rick
Ulrich Mack
Volante Systems
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Joe Shonk
Sent: Fri 16/06/2006 5:14
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Installation Manager vs. Cloning
With IM, you still have to drop an OS with Citrix on the server. Also
note, with IM there is no gaurantee that applications will be installed
in the order you'd like them to be.
From personal experience, no one really uses IM. Sure there are a few,
but there are better solutions out there.
Imaging is OK but there is still some clean up work that has to be
performed.
Scripting is the way to go. Sure, it's bit of work to setup but when
your done you'll have flexibility to the nth degree.
Joe
On 6/15/06, Chad King <caking76@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Some things I've come up with..
Pro's and Con's For using Installation Manager
Pro - Easy to upgrade apps (No need to update and recapture the image)
Pro - Easy and Clean uninstallation of apps (either before an upgrade or
for troubleshooting)
Pro - Easy to manage application deployment for custom builds
Pro - No need to reimage all machines for major upgrades (Apps that
don't uninstall cleanly)
Con - Currently using imaging (There has been a lot of time invested
into this process already)
Con - Takes longer to build a complete server
Con - Every server is gaurenteed to be the same after imaging
If anyone can throw some more Pro's and Con's to me I would really
appreciate. I'm convinced that Installation Manager is better, cleaner,
and easier in the long run but I have done both in the past and can't
say one's hands down better than the other. I'm looking for realistic
pros and cons not Installation Manager is best practice (if you say that
tell me why it's best practice..)
Thanks!
Chad
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