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How can I deploy the Microsoft System Center Advisor agent to multiple Windows 2008 R2 servers? My company has Intune but it's not for servers. I have about 20 2008 R2 virtual machine to install the agent on.

Thanks.

kleefaj
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  • If you don't have a configuration management tool that can do this for you, then get one, and set that up first? If not SCCM, or group policies, then look at puppet, or one of the many alternatives. – Zoredache Mar 06 '14 at 21:38

1 Answers1

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The SCA agent supports command-line arguments for silent installation. The specific switches can be found here.

Once you have the script, you can deploy it via a config management tool (like Intune, which you said you are unable to leverage for this) or through a more cumbersome approach like using psexec or PowerShell remoting to execute the script on each server.

MDMarra
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    *cough* *cough* Group Policy... *cough* Startup Script... *cough* – Evan Anderson Mar 06 '14 at 20:28
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    @EvanAnderson I thought about that, but I hate doing that for servers. It's not "immediate" enough for me in this instance. For desktops where you don't really care, sure. But maybe that's just me :) – MDMarra Mar 06 '14 at 20:29
  • @EvanAnderson I second what Mark says. We only reboot our servers once every quarter (at most), so a startup script to deploy something to a server is of limited utility. – HopelessN00b Mar 06 '14 at 20:35
  • I hear both of you re: the lack of reboots. I'd probably do both. The Startup Script is nice from an "it's automatic the next time you add a new server" perspective. – Evan Anderson Mar 06 '14 at 21:13
  • Isn't there some kind of Microsoft enterprise-scale tool/product for doing things like this? What does someone with 300 servers do? – kleefaj Mar 06 '14 at 21:20
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    @kleefaj they use something like Intune (or more commonly, SCCM) which you've explicitly stated you can't use. You seem surprised that by excluding the correct tool for this job from the question that the alternatives are not attractive. – MDMarra Mar 06 '14 at 21:25
  • My understanding is that Intune cannot be used for servers. It's not something my company is not allowing, just that it doesn't work for servers. Or is this information incorrect? – kleefaj Mar 06 '14 at 21:29
  • @kleefaj MDMarra is right, and Powershell is likely your best alternative. – MDMoore313 Mar 06 '14 at 21:30
  • For servers specifically, you cannot use Intune. You can use SCCM which is very similar, but is not a cloud offering. Do you have SCCM? I inferred from your question that you did not. – MDMarra Mar 06 '14 at 21:39
  • @kleefaj - you're right, InTune can't be used on server OS's. Really, to manage servers, you'd be looking at SCCM/SCOM, which is really overkill for 20 boxes. Your best bet would be to script the install as above, then use something like PSRemoting or (if you're old school) PSExec to run it on your remote machines. This will allow a single script to hit all 20 boxes. – Couradical Mar 06 '14 at 21:41