[THIN] Re: Installation Manager vs. Cloning
- From: "Rick Mack" <Rick.Mack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 11:08:20 +1000
Hi Tony,
I agree, IM is not a cost justification for the Citrix enterprise
product, and I could be really cruel and say that neither is RM etc.
Systrack is smarter than RM, Softgrid is better than AIE/IM, Appsense
Performance Manager is better than the OEMed (and reduced functionality)
Armtech and TScale. USB-it does PDA synchronisation better, ThinPrint
(Print-it, Simplify printing etc) are more stable than the Citrix print
manager. But at least Citrix have all their stuff bundled together, and
if they got off their backsides and improved what they've got it'd be
worth the extra money.
My comment was that if you happen to have enterprise already (and you
don't have Altiris), then I would recommend you have a serious thought
about making use of IM 'cause it's actually a pretty good product for
the Citrix environment.
Is Altiris better than IM and more widely applicable?
Absolutely!
But it's not a "free" add-on ;-)
regards,
Rick
Ulrich Mack
Volante Systems
Level 2, 30 Little Cribb Street
Coronation Drive Office Park
Milton Qld 4064
tel: +61 7 32431847
fax: +61 7 32431992
rmack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:rmack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
-----Original Message-----
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tony Lyne
Sent: Friday, 16 June 2006 7:30 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Installation Manager vs. Cloning
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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