Remotely Deploy Apps across a LAN

EMCO Remote Deployment Kit allows you to install or uninstall applications silently and remotely across your LAN. You can even view a detailed list of applications deployed across various systems

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

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Mass deployment of applications across a LAN is a laborious task that deviates time and resources from other crucial tasks. Let's suppose, a new anti-virus solution needs to be deployed. While doing so, it has to be ensured that all user machines have been updated. Normally,one would need to visit each machine individually and install the required anti-virus application. which is a really laborious task. To help ease out such monotonous and time-consuming tasks, remote application deployment is the need of the hour. It helps you to remotely install or uninstall routine applications on user machines silently, ie, without bothering the user.

There are quite a few remote deployment software available that allow you the luxury of doing such tasks quite effortlessly. EMCO Remote Deployment kit is one such software in this domain. Here, we guide you on how to achieve mass application deployment using this software. It costs around $165 (INR 8250 approx) for 100 nodes. The software can be used to deploy all the routinely used applications such as Acrobat Reader, WinZip, Real Player, MacAfee, Norton anti-virus, MSN messenger, etc. In addition, you can build a deployment kit for your own applications. 

A big advantage of this software is that you don't have to keep the setup files in the repository. You simply need to install the software on the
deployment machine. Before getting into details, let's build a scenario, so that you can understand the implementation process easily.

We assume that the organization is using active directory for user authentication and all the machines are trusted in a domain. Plus, all machines are using Windows OS.

Step 1: Installation
Take a Windows XP/2000/2003 based machine as your deployment machine. Register this machine with your domain controller and install EMCO Remote Deployment kit on it. You can download a 30-day trial version from the link provided. Once you have installed the software, reboot
the machine. Identify frequently used applications in your organization and install them on the deployment machine. Here, we installed Acrobat Reader, Real Player and Norton anti-virus. These are typical applications across workstations in an organization.

Select the machine where you want to deploy the application from the Machine Tree on the left. Drag it to Machine Queue window on the right

Step 2: Using EMCO 
Launch EMCO Remote Deployment Kit from the deployment machine that you have created. Its console is divided into two parts. The left panel shows you details of all the scanned machines across the LAN. The right panel shows remote deployment jobs in queue. On the same panel, at the bottom, you will find an Install/Uninstall button, where you need to select the application, for remote deployment. Now, go to the left panel and click on 'Enumerate LAN.' This will start the scanning of all machines on your network. You can even scan on the basis of domain and range of IP addresses. Once you get the list on the left panel, select the machines and drag and drop them to the right panel. With this, the EMCO deployment kit is ready to use across the selected group of machines.

Before installing/uninstalling any application on a remote client, you will be shown an application list. The ones with a green dot can be deployed while those with a red can't

Step 3: Application deployment
Now, select the application that you want to deploy on the target machine. In the right panel, click on 'Install/Uninstall' button. You will get a list of applications that EMCO can deploy on the target machines, remotely. If you look carefully, you will find green and red dots in front of application names. The applications with green dots denote that the application already exists or has been installed on the deployment machine, and so can be deployed on the remote machines. Whereas red ones denote that these applications are not installed or do not exist on the deployment machine, and hence can't be deployed. Therefore, you can only select applications with green dots.

This window shows a detailed analysis of all remote machines. You can see the number of drives, OS names, protocols, Mac addresses, etc for each machine

After this, click on the Install button. This will start the deployment process. Once the deployment process is complete, you will get a 'successful completion report' with a list of changed parameters on the remote machines. Finally, on the remote machine, check the status of the deployed application.

Note: In windows XP sp2 workstation, you have to add ports in the exception list of the Windows firewall. Add the ports 136, 139 and 445.

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