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I'm getting requests from 'the Field' to make my agent deployment 'easier' but I'm at a loss as to how.

Right now, I provide a user Interface to install and configure the agents.

To deploy the agents, I relied on older Windows technologies, here are the steps I use:

  1. Start dependent services via remote SCM
  2. Copy the agent.MSI via the File Administrative shares
  3. Configure the agent's settings via remote registry calls
  4. Use WMI to remotely silently run the agent.msi
  5. Use the Administrative shares to move the agent.msi to the program folder (for uninstalling later)

To allow all these steps to happen, I need: 1. the firewall to configured correctly 2. the 'installing' user has to have admin access to the remote computer 3. Remote File Admin shares have to be turned on. 4. (I turn on WMI and Remote Registry remotely)

This deployment system was built back in the 2003 days.

Is there some better way now? Maybe a deployment library I can use?

thank you.

Iunknown
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    Unless there's an existing agent on the system that you can make use of (e.g., SCCM, a previous version of your agent, or perhaps even plain old group policy) then your requirements 1-3 are the bare minimum for any sort of remote installation. Whether remote installation is the best approach is another question; typically I think you would either install the first agent on a given system locally, or pre-install it during the original deployment. Obviously this depends on the scenario. Have you spoken directly to any of the end users? Perhaps they're having specific issues. – Harry Johnston Dec 08 '14 at 03:38
  • Planning an SCCM agent deployment is not a development question. This should be over on ServerFault. – Christopher Painter Dec 08 '14 at 15:38
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    This isn't an SCCM agent deployment. We're deploying our own agent and I'm trying to reduce the number of support issues we deal with about it. – Iunknown Dec 08 '14 at 17:07
  • @ChristopherPainter: I think perhaps you've confused SCM (the service control manager, directly related to programming and on-topic here) with SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager, related to system administration and on-topic over at Server Fault) ? – Harry Johnston Dec 08 '14 at 18:48
  • People often misspell or use wrong words so it sure sounded like what he was trying to do. – Christopher Painter Dec 08 '14 at 18:54

1 Answers1

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The best you can do here is to create a properly behaving .MSI that supports silent installation. It is then up to your user communities to plan their own deployments using the tools of their choice such as SCCM. Much more detail is required in order to give exact suggestions.

Christopher Painter
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  • In context, I suspect the OP is talking about software used entirely in-house. But I agree we need more detail. – Harry Johnston Dec 08 '14 at 23:49
  • I do have an MSI that is deployed silently. That's how I do it via WMI. The problem is that the agent needs to know who the master is and that's done via Registry. I did add a feature that creates a .reg file that they can use to manually deploy the configuration and the agent. – Iunknown Dec 16 '14 at 03:59