[sims] Solus 3 deployment

[clareq]

I am in the process of planning our new domain, and the creation of the images we plan to deploy. Would it be good practice to include the Solus 3 agent in our deployment image? We can then browse for agent computers, and add them to the SIMS workstation target group. Of course, if a machine is rebuilt with the same name we still need to find it in Solus 3, remove it and then re-add it, unless I'm missing something.

[Rawns]

Another one for @matt40k I would believe. Never looked at putting the Agent in an image so not sure how (if you can!).

 

Unless I'm missing something obvious, I'd say "Why bother?" as you'll still have to go into the SOLUS3 UI and add the device in to the appropriate channel(s) and then add domain admin credentials to get the relevant software installed. You may as well not bother as SOLUS3 will just install the agent for you if it's not already on the machine anyway.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Rawns

[matt40k]

I'll send you a PM @clareq.

[MrMat]

Don't the agents have specific ID's? Surely if you were to put the Agent within an image, they would all have the same GUID's? Which wouldn't work. Am I being stupid or is that about right?

[matt40k]

Correct. There are ways round this depending how clever your feeling\patient you are.

[Rawns]

Correct. There are ways round this depending how clever your feeling\patient you are.

 

So I guess it would be simplest to leave it up to SOLUS3 to deploy the agent then?

[matt40k]

Short answer, yes, until Capita get it so the S3 server to push out the GUID. Until then you have to query the S3 database to get the GUID then pass it to the installer. Possible, just alot harder and error prone. Assuming you keep the computer name the same.

 

As for in a image - don't actually install it, just have a RunOnce key to run when it boots up the first time then get it to install or push out the agent via SCCM or whatever. If they do something cool like have a rearm option or something then you could install the agent in the image then rearm it (wipe the guid etc).

 

Once they've got this sorted they can move on to more cool things like assigning packages to AD groups - so you would just build a machine put it in a AD security group then it gets SIMS installed.

[minimoo]

Capita can provide a .js file that can install an agent - and generate a guid. In our case, I just use that in a MDT task sequence.

 

We made that decision over a year ago - I found that using S3 server to deploy the agent caused more issues:

a) Sometimes the S3 server would generate a dotnet internal error when trying to execute the WMI queries

b) I *think* it might have been the case that it wouldn't install one of solus or dotnet onto a laptop if that laptop was running on batteries

c) if you deploy an agent it used to use . - if you manually installed an agent, it could use just - in the world of solus3 these were 2 different pc's

 

Whilst I suspect that some of the above i've either mis-remembered or have been fixed/improved - I've found having MDT add the agent, and then sending an email out to the IT support team to go into solus3 and add the new target to be a fairly reliable approach to getting SIM's initially installed on a PC

[matt40k]

That's now include when you hit the export agent button (the js file). Have had a school where it fails because they had Dreamweaver installed. Problem with that is you get duplicate records - hopefully you don't reinstall regularly and your IT keeps on removing the old devices when they add the new ones - so it'll just be if you go into the backend you'll see the chaos it causes.

[clareq]

I've found having MDT add the agent, and then sending an email out to the IT support team to go into solus3 and add the new target to be a fairly reliable approach to getting SIM's initially installed on a PC

 

I like this idea - mind if I pinch it?