starscream Posted July 16, 2007 Posted July 16, 2007 Ok I am a bit gutted with Ranger Primary. I was hoping to be able to ditch ghost and use RIS/WDS to deploy windows fresh installations to computers on the network and then deploy the appropriate software to each machine via ranger package builder, however, it looks like you can't remove deployed packages. They are simply left on unless you were to create an uninstall package which some people on here feel would cause negative matter and cause the universe to implode, so I have stayed clear of that for now. MSI's however are uninstalled from client machines when they are removed from the GPO. That is my understanding anyway! So would it be better for me to create an MSI of every piece of software and just push it out to clients using GPOs? So I hope you can see what I am trying to achieve here. I wan't also to try and integrate device drivers into the RIS windows images but that will all come in time, I am fine to use ghost or WDS to deploy basic windows installs with drivers but using MSI packages for all software seems so powerful as I have never used it. Is the concept of MSIs the same as Ranger package builder, does it create an image of the machine before installation, then another after installation and then compare to two images and create an install based on the changes between to two images? Also what free MSI builders are the best? Winstall2003le? I managed to track this down finally so I do have it. Also does it matter which machine you run it on, for example, could I use a VMWARE virtual machine to install the software on to create the packages and test them and then deploy those packages created on the virtual machine out to my real life network or is that asking for trouble? I am new to individual software deployment but a veteran at ghosts/imaging. Ta guys!
plexer Posted July 17, 2007 Posted July 17, 2007 If the ranger packages are deployed as msi's using gpo's via the range tools then there is no reason you can't remove them via gpo. I believe though that what you have to do is go into the gpo and then into the software installation part and choose to remove the application from there. Just removing the gpo from an ou doesn't uninstall the software. Ben
ajbritton Posted July 17, 2007 Posted July 17, 2007 You can certainly develop packages using virtual machines. I've built literally hundreds using Virtual PC and VMWare. It makes creating a clean machine as simple as clicking the mouse.
plexer Posted July 17, 2007 Posted July 17, 2007 Yup it's fantastic. Been doing it that way for a while and also using virtual domain to test deployments of gpo's etc... Ben
andyrite Posted July 17, 2007 Posted July 17, 2007 Thats an intresting setup. Can you give more details how you have done it. I'm intrested in setting that up.
MkII Posted July 17, 2007 Posted July 17, 2007 What sort of hardware would you say is the minimum for VMs?
plexer Posted July 17, 2007 Posted July 17, 2007 I recently bought a Poweredge 840 with 2gb ram and 2 x 250gb raid mirrored drives specifically for use as a testing server for training my ict support staff. It runs ubuntu server 7.01 I followed an good article on setting up vmware server on it. With this setup I can have a DC and a couple of XP Pro clients running for testing. Ben
ajbritton Posted July 17, 2007 Posted July 17, 2007 I have an old Dell PowerEdge Xeon as a server running Wise, and a Viglen 3GHz P4 with 2Gb RAM running VMWare server. The Viglen will happily run 3 XP VMs or a 2K3 VM and an XP VM simultaneously. All this is on a subnet behind a smoothwall router running on an old Elonex. I manage it all remotely.
plexer Posted July 17, 2007 Posted July 17, 2007 ajbritton: care to elaborate on the smoothwall setup with the vmware server behind it and where it fits into the network and the reason for doing that? Cheers, Ben
starscream Posted July 17, 2007 Author Posted July 17, 2007 Wait a minute....so does ranger package builder actually create MSIs and then ranger deploys them itself? So do I just find the ranger MSIs and then use GPO to deploy them instead of ranger. Then when I want to remove them I remove them from the GPO rather than remove the GPO?
plexer Posted July 17, 2007 Posted July 17, 2007 starscream: No idea what ranger package builder creates but if it ain't msi's then it's kinda stoopid. Ben
plexer Posted July 17, 2007 Posted July 17, 2007 starscream: No idea what ranger package builder creates but if it ain't msi's then it's kinda stoopid. Ben
starscream Posted July 17, 2007 Author Posted July 17, 2007 See it deploys the packages itself too. I will have to have a dig about. If it does create MSIs then I'm laughing. If not then I need another solution to create them.
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