Forefront Endpoint 2010

[m8ttysmith]

This may of been asked many times before, but i am reviewing our symantec agreement and someone told me forefront is free for education establishments... does anyone know if this is correct ?

[Millgate]

It's part of the core cal suite in EES agreements if you have that?

[plexer]

As Luke says it's not free but is part of the EES agreement signing up for an EES agreement allows you to have the latest version of windows and office on your computers so once you have the cost of EES for your establishment knock of what you normally pay per year for your AV and then you will see how much it's going to cost you extra for EES in effect.

 

You may also need SCCM licences in order to deploy Forefront.

 

Ben

[sonofsanta]

SCCM, for what it's worth, costing less than £100 for a perpetual licence with the full MSSQL included, and having lots of other benefits.

[gshaw]

Also if you get Enterprise CALs (not a great deal more on top) you can replace your anti-spam software with Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (cloud based service similar to Messagelabs) or if you want you can run it locally on your own servers (but I can't see the point of doing that personally)

 

EES is well worth going for, SCCM for £100 is a bargain

[plexer]

For Forefront deployment you only need SCCM standard which is about £19.00

 

Ben

[morganw]

You don't need SCCM to deploy Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010, it has a silent install switch and can be configured with a GPO.

Officially, you do need SCCM for log collection from the clients as there isn't a separate FEP Management console.

Unofficially, I'm sure I've read you can collect logs from the clients through other methods. e.g. a script

[sven]

I'd like to jump in on this thread if that's OK.

 

We are currently using McAfee as our antivirus solution. It is supplied and supported by Liverpool City Council and I'm having huge difficulties trying to get them to configure it to a point where it actually works. I am looking at moving to Forefront Endpoint Protection in order to prevent me having to rely on any external "interference" from our local council. I have seen the comments from morganw regarding SCCM, but I was wondering what other benefits I can expect to get from using SCCM?

[irsprint84]

wait for 2012 sccm, its just around the corner and alot better

[sven]

So would I be able to deploy Endpoint Protection via a GPO, and then just get SCCM at a later date?

[irsprint84]

Thats what I do

[sven]

That's great. Have you had any issues getting SCCM to "integrate" with Endpoint Protection when installing it AFTER the client deployment?

[irsprint84]

nope, just sccm 2007 is a pain! 2012 is RC so wait a few more weeks for that

[sven]

nope, just sccm 2007 is a pain! 2012 is RC so wait a few more weeks for that

 

 

You guys are brilliant. Thank you so much for your time. I'm downloading Forefront Endpoint Protection from the MS Licensing site right now and going to install it on a test client.

[sven]

Thats what I do

Just to clarify, how are you deploying this out to your clients? I only seem to have an exe rather than an MSI. Will I have to install this using a startup script?

[morganw]

I deployed it with WPKG, but a startup script would probably do it. I think you just use /S for a silent install.

Then on your WSUS server get updates for it and set them to auto-approve. Because it updates through Windows Updates and can be configured with a GPO it's the closest you'll get to "set and forget" anti-virus.