Application Deployment

Usage and Config Platform
1

(imported topic written by msipackager91)

Hi, apologies if this has been asked before - I did have a quick search but nothing came up.

We have a central repository for our packaged applications (typically MSI packages) and have been asked to look at deploying them via BigFix.

I understand that we can user the software deployment wizard to compress the source files then have that delivered to the client, uncompressed then excute the required command line (msiexec /i path\package.msi etc)

However we would much perfer to bypass compressing and downloading the source files and install them directly from our existing repository - which is a hidden share to which everyone has read access.

So, can a BigFix action run a command line along the lines of:

c:\windows\system32\msiexec.exe /i \server\share$\package_v1.0\package.msi TRANSFORMS=\server\share$\package_v1.0\transform.mst /qb

Or will we have access problems due to BigFix running as a local system account and if so are there any alternatives?

I’m used to using SMS or AD group policy to deploy packages to excuse me if this is basic question but I thought I’d ask before trying it out as it could save us a lot of time in testing :slight_smile:

Thanks,

Rob.

2

(imported comment written by jessewk)

If the share is configured as a null session share your technique will work.

However, it’s generally not recomended if you’ll be deploying to more than a few machines or to machines that have slow links to the share. You’ll get much better performance and reliability if you create actions that download the files and distribute them through the relay hierarchy.

Jesse

3

(imported comment written by msipackager91)

Thanks for the response.

All of our target servers are on the local network with the source repository so I don’t anticipate any issues there…

The concern with downloading the packages to the servers via BigFix we are using double the disk spare (i.e. source and installed files). We can’t delete the source files since they may be required if a MSI repair is instigated…

Keeping them in the original source location would eliminate these issues and keep our application deployment in line with more traditional methods.

Anyway I’ll give it a whirl… thanks again for your time. Any other comments / advice much appreciated.

Regards,

Rob.