Evaluating Desktop Central - Best practices and recommendations regarding software deployment
Hello,
we are currently evaluating Desktop Central to replace our current software deployment solution, WPKG (in combination with Wpkg-Gp for installation during system boot). WPKG is a very simple, xml driven deployment solution that works well when used in an intranet environment but it is a bit limited when dealing with slower network connections. When testing Desktop Central I noticed that DC is conceptually quite different from WPKG and I'd like to know how admins generally use DC.
For instance, we have software profiles in WPKG. A profile can contain several software products and a computer can be assigned several profiles. At startup, the WPKG script checks all profiles and the packages contained in them and installs software that is missing on the computer. When installing a new computer, I just have to assign the standard profile to the computer and WPKG installs all the software this default profile contains. DC has deployments which can also contain several packages. You can target a deployment on custom groups, so to replicate my WPKG setup, i would create a custom group, add the clients to that group and then create a deployment containing all packages I want deployed on those systems. Is that correct?
Another question I have deals with software updates. Right now, in WPKG I don't create new packages for software updates, I just change the package. The packages contain version checks and detect old versions on target systems, updating the software when needed. Can DC do that or do I have to replace an old package with a new one in my deployments? What if a package is in multiple deployments and I want to update all of them? Is there an easy way to, for instance, replace a Firefox 44 package with Firefox 45 in all deployment configurations? Or can I just add the new firefox installer to the repository and change the existing Firefox package?
thanks for your help,
Dirk
we are currently evaluating Desktop Central to replace our current software deployment solution, WPKG (in combination with Wpkg-Gp for installation during system boot). WPKG is a very simple, xml driven deployment solution that works well when used in an intranet environment but it is a bit limited when dealing with slower network connections. When testing Desktop Central I noticed that DC is conceptually quite different from WPKG and I'd like to know how admins generally use DC.
For instance, we have software profiles in WPKG. A profile can contain several software products and a computer can be assigned several profiles. At startup, the WPKG script checks all profiles and the packages contained in them and installs software that is missing on the computer. When installing a new computer, I just have to assign the standard profile to the computer and WPKG installs all the software this default profile contains. DC has deployments which can also contain several packages. You can target a deployment on custom groups, so to replicate my WPKG setup, i would create a custom group, add the clients to that group and then create a deployment containing all packages I want deployed on those systems. Is that correct?
Another question I have deals with software updates. Right now, in WPKG I don't create new packages for software updates, I just change the package. The packages contain version checks and detect old versions on target systems, updating the software when needed. Can DC do that or do I have to replace an old package with a new one in my deployments? What if a package is in multiple deployments and I want to update all of them? Is there an easy way to, for instance, replace a Firefox 44 package with Firefox 45 in all deployment configurations? Or can I just add the new firefox installer to the repository and change the existing Firefox package?
thanks for your help,
Dirk