Central software management solutions for Windows endpoints

[Sephiroth]

Hi all,

 

I'm in the process of looking at the way that we do things with regards to software deployment. As it stands, the majority of our software is deployed by Group Policy, either by MSI (native or wrapped) or script. Anything that can't be done that way or that would be cumbersome (MS Office, Adobe Suite...) are done by MDT. As an aside, we don't have a licence for SCCM and It's seen as an unnecessary tool here as most of the extra functionality is superfluous to us.

 

I'm looking at something like Chocolatey to do software deployments but would like something that I can push applications out from, rather than requiring the endpoints to request updates. I know Chocolatey has a paid model for business that could potentially do this, but I'm curious if anyone here uses it or has any other suggestions for things I can look at that are free (ideally OSS) / reasonably priced and relatively simple to manage.

 

Thanks!

[mavhc]

I have a scheduled task to run "choco upgrade all", and a boot task to install new packages

 

Also a powershell script that finds online computers and sends them a command, such as choco install newpackage

[dmj]

Free configuration management systems to look at puppet and ansible I'm sure both would work with chocolatey

 

Edit: I should add that puppet uses a pull model where a client is installed and the client pulls updates, whereas ansible uses a push model where a server pushes config changes to the client.

Edited September 27, 2024 by dmj

[Jcx500]

At my last edu post I used wpkg, not sure if it’s in active development anymore tho!

 

Currently use SCCM/MDT to install software and I target it via wmi queries in the task sequence

Edited September 29, 2024 by Jcx500

[thimon]

I use PDQ Connect. Much more reliable than PDQ Deploy as it uses an agent. Best money I’ve ever spent.

 

Edit. Just seen you said free. Sorry!

[jthompson]

Free configuration management systems to look at puppet and ansible I'm sure both would work with chocolatey

 

Edit: I should add that puppet uses a pull model where a client is installed and the client pulls updates, whereas ansible uses a push model where a server pushes config changes to the client.

These have both been on my "to have a play with" list for yonks.

[Sephiroth]

Thanks all for the suggestions!

 

I have a scheduled task to run "choco upgrade all", and a boot task to install new packages

 

Also a powershell script that finds online computers and sends them a command, such as choco install newpackage

I've had a look at ways to automate this over the weekend. Do you have your own repository for apps? Can you use the public repo and target specific apps from a private repo?

 

At my last edu post I used wpkg, not sure if it’s in active development anymore tho!

 

Currently use SCCM/MDT to install software and I target it via wmi queries in the task sequence

SCCM would be lovely but it's not really worth us looking at for the cost of it. We use MDT/WDS and GPOs as the cheap and simple solution of the time (~2014) but I'm looking to make my life easier with tools that the school might actually get!

 

I use PDQ Connect. Much more reliable than PDQ Deploy as it uses an agent. Best money I’ve ever spent.

 

Edit. Just seen you said free. Sorry!

I have looked at PDQ Deploy before. I'm open to reasonably priced suggestions. What kind of pricing did you get for Connect?

[mavhc]

Thanks all for the suggestions!

I've had a look at ways to automate this over the weekend. Do you have your own repository for apps? Can you use the public repo and target specific apps from a private repo?

 

https://github.com/mavhc/choco-school although I've updated it a bit since then, send me your email if you want to test

 

I've not made my own packages, just use the ones that already exist so far.

 

You can have more than one repo source, but they don't like you connecting 100s of computers to their community repo, so you make your own locally

[jthompson]

Free configuration management systems to look at puppet and ansible I'm sure both would work with chocolatey

 

Edit: I should add that puppet uses a pull model where a client is installed and the client pulls updates, whereas ansible uses a push model where a server pushes config changes to the client.

 

RE: Ansible, is it a bit of a non-starter when considering managing Windows clients that are powered off as much as on? Puppet looks like a steeper learning curve, but seems on the face of it like the one to use if you just want to say "make sure all these computers are running version X" of some app.

[supportman]

We use PDQ deploy here, works pretty well and is quite cheap for education.

 

Connect is more expensive but pretty cool.

[thimon]

I have looked at PDQ Deploy before. I'm open to reasonably priced suggestions. What kind of pricing did you get for Connect?

 

I was an early adopter, so got just under $11 per device per year. It’s now $18 per device.

[dmj]

RE: Ansible, is it a bit of a non-starter when considering managing Windows clients that are powered off as much as on? Puppet looks like a steeper learning curve, but seems on the face of it like the one to use if you just want to say "make sure all these computers are running version X" of some app.

 

For ansible you could send a WOL packet and wait on boot, have a callback on boot to a tower/awx server, or adopt an eventual consistency model. There are options.

I think the biggest strength of puppets model over ansible is for offsite machines, that can update configurations over the internet. It's a lot harder to do that with a push model if you don't control the ingress for the network the machine resides on.