Sun 7110, CIFS share for MSI's

[cookie_monster]

Has anybody tried to deploy 'home made' msi files from a CIFS share on a SAN?

The reason that i'm asking is that we have a number of msi files that we made with WinInstall and they contain references to the server name, this isn't a problem normally but i'm wondering how I can get around this with the SAN. Would I be better off creating a new VM server with the same name and creating a share on that to serve up the msi's or is there a way to make the CIFS share look like it's hosted on the windows box?

[Duke]

I can't say I've ever run into an issue where an MSI is tied to the server it was built on!

Pretty much all of our MSIs are created directly from an administrative install with msiexec on the base MSI package the manufacturer provides and the new MSI packages (usually with product keys and our settings) are just saved to our MSI store. I know of no issues with then moving those files to somewhere else as long as the locations are updated in the Group Policy. Any idea exactly what it is they reference that server for?

Anyway, you probably have a few options. A new VM server with the same name would work as you suggested, and you could even map CIFS storage from the SAN to that VM if you wanted so the MSI files were still stored on a file-level area on the SAN in case you needed to move them elsewhere or wanted to keep them independent from the VM's block-level virtual disk image.

Depending on exactly why the MSIs reference the server they were created on (e.g. do they need files from the Windows system drive, or do they just need to be in the same location they were created) you might be able to make a DNS entry that pointed the old server name to the SAN and just ensure whatever share path you used on the server (e.g. \\servername\MSIstore$) is the same as you use on the SAN (e.g. \\sanname\MSIstore$). As a CIFS share on the SAN is pretty much the same as a Windows share, your clients and your Group Policies hopefully wouldn't know any difference if the DNS records pointed them to the SAN.

Cheers,
Chris

[cookie_monster]

Well I haven't tried to move them yet, all of the manufacturer created ones are no problem but when I open some of the ones created with Wininstall in Orca I can see loads of references to the server that I created them on.

I might move a couple and see what happens.

[Duke]

I guess the worst-case scenario then is that you have to edit the paths with Orca, but if you've got a lot of MSIs and there's a lot of paths I can see why that would be a problem. The references to the server might turn out to be non-critical and the MSI will carry on installing even if the paths don't match.

As you say, try a couple and hope for the best, good luck!
Chris