Roll out software to one classroom

[adamyoung]

We've got some MSI's that we'd like to roll out just to a couple of classrooms. At the moment our software distribution rolls it out to all machines on curric.

 

How can we set it to roll out to just one room (the rooms are configured in Layout in Active Directory as RM-ILC, RM-MUSIC etc)?

 

Thanks!

[Dos_Box]

Hmm. How about organising a decent hierachy? Start with a whole school computer GPO to contain all of the schools computers which are then further divided into room GPOs? A have always prefered the room naming scheme R21_01 (for room 21 computer 01), R22_01 etc and have a GPO for R21 and R22 etc. This way you can either deploy software for the entire school or to seperate rooms as is needed.

[Geoff]

Setup a new security group. Put your machine accounts that belong to the room in it. Create your GPO. Change the security filter and remove Authenticated Users then add your new security group.

 

Beware though, if strange things happen its not obvious to anyone who doesn't know that the GPO is only applying to select machines making wierdness more difficult to debug. Sure the GPMC reveals whats going on but I dislike the added complexity security/wimi filtering adds to GPO's.

 

Dos_Box's method to retool your AD structure is probably a better solution in the long run.

[Dos_Box]

Like this...

 

your.school.name--
      -- School Computers--
                   -- R21
                   -- R22
                   -- R23
                   -- Music

Edited by Ric_ to make it look pretty

[ajbritton]

Sorting out OU structure is definitely a good idea, but it doesn't matter how clever your OU structure is, chances are that sooner or later there will be a good time to use GPO filtering. I tried to avoid it for quite a while, and made life very difficult for myself. I now use OUs to group PCs for as much software as makes sense and then use filtering for software like Whiteboard software which is only required on certain PCs (would be nice to use WMI to do this but not had chance to try it yet), or software which has limited number of licences.

 

Don't be scared, it's quite easy to do. I would recommend naming your filtering groups so that they are easily recognised as such (or keep them in a 'GPO Filter Groups' OU. Also, I tend to rename GPOs when they are filtered so that they appear more obvious.

 

There is another school of thought which goes that ALL software should be installed using GPO filters. This way, all software can be assigned at a high level, and computers added to groups as appropriate. This method has the advantage that moving computers between OUs will not cause software to be uninstalled/reinstalled.

[tarquel]

your.school.name--
      -- School Computers--
                   -- R21
                   -- R22
                   -- R23
                   -- Music 

 

 

Yep - thats similar to what I have too. In learning GP and AD as I went along, the first thing thats important [iMO] is organisation hehe

 

Then, i dont think it was wrote above hehe, define a seperate GPO [i dont know how Geoff's method works hehe] and call it something meaningful to the task and configure the software installation accordingly.

 

Then link that GPO to the OU of the target machines and give 'em a restart hehe

 

You may want to test it out first on a single machine in your room or something like I do [i use my only IT admin workstation as the guinea pig hehe].

 

EDIT: Damn these ppl beating me to my anwser hehe *sobs*

 

Cheers

N