McAfee Installation advice.

[boomam]

Hi.
After finally getting somewhere with our supplier, i have the downloads for McAfee v8.5.

Now, a few questions:
Am i correct in thinking that all i need to install server side is VirusScanEnterprise, Spyware module & Alert manager?

And how do i use the MSIs that are packaged with the installers do roll out to workstations?
I know how to do MSIs in GPOs, ive been doing it for ages, what i mean is, how do i install the software in silent mode, so that when its running theres no indication of it running at all?+ with the licencing stuff on it also.


Thanks in advance all. .

[FN-GM]

McAfee Installation advice.

Here is some advice don’t! Only joking mate.


Can you not install it from a console on the server?

[boomam]

What console? There isnt one.


To further the problem, our LEA have a deal with McAfee where they can get the AV for half the price. Only problem is, that the only way to install it is via a web browser, on each machine! Considering the saving that it has, it looks like the school might be going for it, even if it does increase my workload significantely.

[TheCrust]

Here is some advice don’t!

I'd have to agree I'm afraid.

We used to use McAfee TVD - but the console on the central server kept crashing, hanging and had all manner of wierd and wonderful problems. McAfee's excuse when we tried to get support from them? "Your network is too big".

Excuse me? We purchased 400 licences because, heven forbid, we might want to use it on 400 machines. How can this be "too big" and more to the point, why did you not tell us this during the pre-sales stuff when we did the requirements analysis?

We didn't stay with McAfee long and now use AVG - it's a fraction of the price of McAfee for educational users, a sinch to install remotely and has much better rates of detection in the magazine tests of AV software (if you believe the journalistic hype, that is).

Sorry, I know that's a bit of a digression and it doesn't help you solve your problem, but I thought it relevent.

Good luck with the install!

[mortstar]

Been using McAfee with ePO (ePolicy Orchestrator) without a hitch here for a while now, the decision for this solution because the LEA provide it to us for free. I had to call the LEA support to get the disk with the latest versions of the VirusScan, Anti-Spyware and the ePO.

Once ePO is setup, which does take some fiddling, sending the ePO agent and then the AntiVirus and Anti-Spyware to the clients is straight forward. The most problems I get is sending the agent over the wireless network to some laptops which seems to fail.

You can even set ePO to detect when machines have been connected without AntiVirus and to force it upon them.

Have a word with your LEA and see if you can have ePO to run on a server within your school. In the long run it will save you much time.

[bizzel]

Sorry to hijack the thread but is the epo a separate /addon product to virusscan? We have Enterprise 8.5i but no epo as far as I can see.

[eean]

There is an instillation designer, which you can download from the Mcafee website if you have the Grant number from your LEA. This creates a custom msi with all your settings built in. As it's MSI it will run silently.
The only problem I had (with v8.0) was ticking the box that told it to update the virus defs during setup - this caused it to hang, so I left it out and it would update itself on the next schedule.

[boomam]

There is an instillation designer, which you can download from the Mcafee website if you have the Grant number from your LEA. This creates a custom msi with all your settings built in. As it's MSI it will run silently.
The only problem I had (with v8.0) was ticking the box that told it to update the virus defs during setup - this caused it to hang, so I left it out and it would update itself on the next schedule.

Unfortunatelly, our LEA wont give us a grant number.

The only alternative option to the web based installation is to download a *.exe file, thats about 2-3Mb in size that does the install as well.
I suppose i could blast that out with a startup script or something of that ilk, but im still unsure.
Its either save £500 and go for the severely limited option of this deal from our LEA. Or dont save £500 and go for the fully fledged version.

Thoughts?