Group Policy and MSI installs advice needed.

[Kyle]

I am new to all this as my Team Leader is a old NT4 guy.

I have one OU called rooms and inside this Ou i have 10 OU's reached named after the room.ie room2, room3, etc Inside the room Os's are around 10 PC's each.

At the moment i have chosen 2 rooms to deploy a picee of safotware to and it all works fine. I now want to deploy it to all the other rooms. If i put the MSI install at the top level OU eg rooms it will deploy to all the rooms, but what happens to the individual OU's that i have already deployed to inside the top level OU. does it over install or check to see whats there.

Could someone please explain,

Also I f i only want it on 9 of the rooms instead of 10 how do i stop it from going to the one i dont want. do have it to deploy it to the 9 rooms separately or can i stop it going the one. If i try block inheritance on the OU i dont want the software to goto does it block all inheritance ie a the top level OU rooms i have scripts running to map drives to all the rooms.

Hope i have made sense.

[Ric_]

Most MSIs should only install if the app isn't already present.

You could always remove the app from the OUs that it is in already and simply have it at the top level 'Rooms' OU - probably cleaner and neater anyway.

[Gatt]

Ric_'s right there - deployed software only installs if its not already on the PC - though there is one exception i've found - XPs SP2!!

If u install it manually it appears in Add/Remove as "Windows XP Service Pack 2"
But if u install it via GPO - it installs as ""Windows XP Service Pack 2"
(1033)"

Result? If XP2 is already installed manually GPO installs it again!! ending up with 2 entries in Add/Remove -

"Windows XP Service Pack 2"
"Windows XP Service Pack 2 (1033)"

Not encountered any more of these oddities yet though!

[altecsole]

Also I f i only want it on 9 of the rooms instead of 10 how do i stop it from going to the one i dont want. do have it to deploy it to the 9 rooms separately or can i stop it going the one. If i try block inheritance on the OU i dont want the software to goto does it block all inheritance ie a the top level OU rooms i have scripts running to map drives to all the rooms.

How about this?

Create a global group on the server called Software (or similar) and add the computers to it that you want to install the software on. Then, change the security setting on the GPO so that it only applies to the Software group?

I've never done this, but in theory it should work (assuming the software is assigned to computers, and not users).

[ajbritton]

First, ask yourself if you might ever be in the situation where you want to remove the software from one room, or add another room which might need different software.

I tend to shy away from assigning software policies high up the structure and instead assign them to each sub-ou. This means you can still add another 'room' OU and have control over what software you want on it. This is not really much of a problem unless you have dozens of rooms.

I also regularly use GPO filtering to limit the installation of certain software to just a couple of PCs (useful for SMARTboard software). It works fine.

[tarquel]

ajb is the appointed god of GP, AD & software deployment I'd say

*bows*



Nath

[ajbritton]

Gosh ops: ... I ... I don't know what to say !!