Sam_Brown Posted August 4, 2015 Posted August 4, 2015 We've been putting off moving to SOLUS 3 for quite some time. I've had some nightmare situations at the primary schools I've supported and not really looking to move to SOLUS 3 but capita are pushing us on it quite hard at the moment. Is there still an end date for when SOLUS 2 will no longer be supported and are the issues of many years back still present?
3s-gtech Posted August 4, 2015 Posted August 4, 2015 Opinion? Once it's set up and working properly (e.g. your DNS settings are bombproof), I don't mind it at all. Few quirks, few odd bits in the UI, but generally it blows SOLUS 2 away for us.
sparkeh Posted August 4, 2015 Posted August 4, 2015 Cons: The UI is horrible. The workflow is not intuitive. Its if it was designed by someone who had never used heard of SIMS. Pros: Its a lot easier to get your devices updated than using S2 (if you get S3 setup correctly and understand its quirks that is).
howartp Posted August 4, 2015 Posted August 4, 2015 Cons: The UI is horrible. The workflow is not intuitive. Its if it was designed by someone who had never used heard of SIMS. Pros: Its a lot easier to get your devices updated than using S2 (if you get S3 setup correctly and understand its quirks that is). What s/he said.
Cache Posted August 4, 2015 Posted August 4, 2015 I 3rd the above! For us it's working great, yes we've had some (major) issues with it at times, but for deploying the last 12 months worth of SIMS/Discover upgrades it's been good and has got better. The UI unfortunately leaves more to be desired then the original release.
round2it Posted August 4, 2015 Posted August 4, 2015 Ui was designed by a chimp but it does work very well
dapaulio Posted August 11, 2015 Posted August 11, 2015 (edited) I was told Support for s2 is up with the spring 16 release. We moved to s3 with the summer 15 release whilst we migrate our server to sql 2012 so not had a lot of time to play with s3 but from what I have notice my Opinion is rubbish 1 - no supported solution for automated deployment via gpo 2 - after update, all agents have to be online to push a update to clients otherwise it fails on the client and the user log a support request to have sums fixed on their computer 3 - you reimage or rename the computer after an agent is deployed it you have to delete the record in the console and readd it 4 - if your computer clients have not been switched on for a while eg over summer hols. dhcp issues a new address creating a new dns record there is a period where dns hasn't caught up and removed the stale records causing false online/offline reports in the s3 console. The workaround I found is creating a dhcp reservation for all clients with sins installed I would be interested in any comments or advice on the annoyances I have come to encounter with s3 Edited August 11, 2015 by dapaulio
sparkeh Posted August 11, 2015 Posted August 11, 2015 1 - no supported solution for automated deployment via gpo Don't get started on that again, I am still hoarse from shouting "give us an msi" the last time this kind of issue was raised! 2 - after update, all agents have to be online to push a update to clients otherwise it fails on the client and the user log a support request to have sums fixed on their computer Shouldn't do, offline clients should pick up the update when they are turned on, at least they do here. 3 - you reimage or rename the computer after an agent is deployed it you have to delete the record in the console and readd it Yeah that's plain awful, handling renames really is basic stuff. 4 - if your computer clients have not been switched on for a while eg over summer hols. dhcp issues a new address creating a new dns record there is a period where dns hasn't caught up and removed the stale records causing false online/offline reports in the s3 console. The workaround I found is creating a dhcp reservation for all clients with sins installed It does rely on accurate DNS, I have quite short scavenging times so doesn't seem to happen.
Cache Posted August 13, 2015 Posted August 13, 2015 2 - after update, all agents have to be online to push a update to clients otherwise it fails on the client and the user log a support request to have sums fixed on their computer If your on 3.9 that shouldn't be an issue. When the client comes online the agent should check in with the console, detect the update has been deployed and install it. It's become a lot quicker in recent times - have you got Solus 3 configured to Automatically download the updates to clients? That might help matters if it has a few days to download updates before you deploy them. 3 - you reimage or rename the computer after an agent is deployed it you have to delete the record in the console and readd it Reimage shouldn't be so much of an issue any more, if your on 3.9 when you reimage a machine providing it has the same name you can issue the Reinstall Agent from the console which will then install the agent and SIMS again. Discover you will still need to redeploy. Rename is still an issue, I think my change request is still floating around on Supportnet/My Account from a few years back if you want to vote for it.
Ghostgame Posted August 17, 2015 Posted August 17, 2015 1 - no supported solution for automated deployment via gpo Hopefully I have not got the wrong end of the stick with this but 3.9 now allows you to automatically extract the S3 updates. Settings --> SOLUS3 --> Updates You can set where you want the physical files to extract to. I don't know anything about GPO but I guess you could use this feature get the files and then push them out via GPO. If I have got this wrong, sorry in advance.
matt40k Posted August 17, 2015 Posted August 17, 2015 You've always been able to get the SOLUS3 agent out as a MSI, which you can then deploy via SCCM\GPO\whatever - the problem is the GUID, because the client defines the GUID you have to query the database to get the correct GUID when reinstalling - otherwise you have to do some manual work (yuck). It's possible to do, its just a pain. All Capita need to do is if the GUID is blank on the SOLUS3 Agent, then the server pushes it out one, that way SIMS-DESKTOP-1 will always be in the SIMS channel and always get SIMS deployed. Cause at the moment you add SIMS-DESKTOP-1 into the SIMS channel, then months\years later you reinstall it and create another entry in the SOLUS3 database, one SIMS-DESKTOP-1 with now unused GUID but in the SIMS channel and another SIMS-DESKTOP-1 with a used GUID but no SIMS channel. So you have useless entries in your SOLUS3 database and if you haven't been good and remove the unwanted ones you'll be trying to ping them come every update - which is prob why some people have problems - they prob have 999 workstations in the DB but only actually have 50. It's annoying as the fix is simple - and would allow GPO deployments. So I'll say it again - All Capita need to do is if the GUID is blank on the SOLUS3 Agent, then the server pushes it out one. Why Capita wasted dev resources on the new UI rather then simple fixes like - if the GUID is blank on the SOLUS3 Agent, then the server pushes it out one - I don't know. 2
SHimmer45 Posted September 4, 2015 Posted September 4, 2015 Hopefully I have not got the wrong end of the stick with this but 3.9 now allows you to automatically extract the S3 updates. Settings --> SOLUS3 --> Updates You can set where you want the physical files to extract to. I don't know anything about GPO but I guess you could use this feature get the files and then push them out via GPO. If I have got this wrong, sorry in advance. is this the repository folder? as all i have in here is .pkg files, i was expecting to find an MSI if i need to manually install sims without using SOLUS if there is an issue with the agent?
Cache Posted September 4, 2015 Posted September 4, 2015 No, the repository is seperate. If you choose to extract the files to a specific directory, the SIMS updates will extract the relevent SIMSAMPARK, SIMSManuals, SIMSSetup files etc. to the directory and I can't remember what discover extracts as. 1
minimoo Posted September 4, 2015 Posted September 4, 2015 @matt40k - missed this post up until now - I think 3.10 probably goes some way to addressing your comments (albeit in a weird way) Having used solus 3 since quite early on - it's progressed a lot. I was feeling that 3.10 was really the first version that fixed/handled issues schools might hit and even with the previous release of 3.9 - that it was really the time that people should move from solus 2 to solus 3 (and i think i've stated that on this forum before) - but then, I had to spend 1 hour writing a script to fix the fact the solus 3 service crashed on start. That "bug" basically puts solus 3 into a non-recoverable state - which is a critical issue for an "update service". I've investigate a fair chunk of time into making sure agent deployments across 500 workstations are working, and it was going smoothly. SIM's currently is one of the only applications we don't put into APP-V. I'm currently wondering whether that's a sensible move...
matt40k Posted September 4, 2015 Posted September 4, 2015 Yer, was talking to one of the S3 devs today about it and it sounds like a real winner as it gets over the bug with reinstalling assuming you don't change hw. Next step would be auto adding to channels. Personally I'd either ditch sims or get the teacher app so the fat client is only on desktops
SHimmer45 Posted September 5, 2015 Posted September 5, 2015 No, the repository is seperate. If you choose to extract the files to a specific directory, the SIMS updates will extract the relevent SIMSAMPARK, SIMSManuals, SIMSSetup files etc. to the directory and I can't remember what discover extracts as. hmm mine is set to \\servername\sims\sims\repository but when i ask it to extract the upgrade is errors saying it cants contact the server (assuming the capita one?) cant seem to set any other folder under settings upgrades (running solus 3.9)
Cache Posted September 5, 2015 Posted September 5, 2015 I don't use the auto extract so don't know, but have you tried a local path to auto extract to rather then a network share?
ITGURU Posted September 5, 2015 Posted September 5, 2015 Never been a fan of SOLUS 3 despite trying to use it and testing on clients since it's release. Seems to work fine for online clients at the time of update, but if they're offline, never picked up the update quick enough if a teacher wanted to use SIMS straight away. Found it much easier just to double click the SIMS icon, let it update, then the user can login. It's just another Agent to add to the list of systems to manage.
SHimmer45 Posted September 7, 2015 Posted September 7, 2015 Never been a fan of SOLUS 3 despite trying to use it and testing on clients since it's release. Seems to work fine for online clients at the time of update, but if they're offline, never picked up the update quick enough if a teacher wanted to use SIMS straight away. Found it much easier just to double click the SIMS icon, let it update, then the user can login. It's just another Agent to add to the list of systems to manage. indeed but solus 2 is being taken out back and being put down
matt40k Posted September 7, 2015 Posted September 7, 2015 Found it much easier just to double click the SIMS icon, let it update, then the user can login. Yer, I can imagine getting the end-user install their own software is easier. 2
Sam_Brown Posted September 7, 2015 Author Posted September 7, 2015 indeed but solus 2 is being taken out back and being put down Is there an actual definite end date? SOLUS 2 has been EOL for a few years now but it seems get extended again and again and again...
Sam_Brown Posted September 7, 2015 Author Posted September 7, 2015 Yer, I can imagine getting the end-user install their own software is easier. It's what we do with our SCCM setup. Each user gets the standard list of software installed and anything else like subject specific software they can install via the software centre. Works pretty well.
SHimmer45 Posted September 8, 2015 Posted September 8, 2015 Is there an actual definite end date? SOLUS 2 has been EOL for a few years now but it seems get extended again and again and again... i thinks its support ends in one of the releases late this year or early next
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now