Automatic Client Deploy

(imported topic written by Marty23)

HI;

I was wondering, can I use the infometion listed in the “Unmanaged Asset” list to create a task that will automaticaly deploy the BES client?

If I can’t do it that way, is there another way to automaticely deploy the client to Windows based systems?

Marty

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hey Marty,

This is a good idea and we are going to provide this feature in a newer version of BES. The basic way it can work is that you will basically right-click on an Unmanaged Asset and then click “Deploy BES Client” and the BES Client Deploy tool will be activated. Note that this requires that you have administrative access to the computer (as for any BES Client installation).

There is fundamentally nothing preventing you from doing this same process today by opening the BES Client Deploy tool and pasting the IP address from the Unmanaged Asset dialog into the BES Client Deploy tool. The only difference is that we can make this whole process be 1-2 clicks in the future and today it requires multiple steps.

Ben

(imported comment written by Marty23)

Thanks Ben;

When is that feature going to be available?

It would be great if it was possible to create a task/fixlet with a relevance that would basically say that if a systems is unmanaged and is a Windows Os, with an action of deploy the client to it. That way you could make the fixlet a policy and have it apply to any new systems that the unmanaged query finds.

Any chance that this will be possible in the same release?

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hey Marty,

We might be able to do something like that, but it won’t be with Fixlets/Tasks (because Fixlets and Tasks require a BES Client to evaluate them).

What we can try today is create a little script that periodically queries the BES database, gets a list of all the IP addresses that appear to come from Windows computers. We can then feed this into the BES Client deploy tool.

This database query looks like it should do the trick:

select uf.FieldContents as 
'IP Address' from UNMANAGEDASSET_FIELDS_TYPES uft, UNMANAGEDASSET_FIELDS uf, UNMANAGEDASSET_FIELDS_TYPES uft2, UNMANAGEDASSET_FIELDS uf2 where uft.FieldName = 
'IP Address' AND uf.FieldID=uft.FieldID AND uft2.FieldName = 
'OS' AND uf2.FieldID=uft2.FieldID AND uf2.AssetID=uf.AssetID AND uf2.FieldContents LIKE 
'%windows%'

Now all we need is a little control script to excute this query, then run the BES Client Deploy tool on the results.

Ben

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Making sure to connect all these posts together:

http://forum.bigfix.com/viewtopic.php?pid=6613#p6613

(imported comment written by rkc91)

Ben

Would like to see the client deployment for non windows aswell.

rkc

(imported comment written by jessewk)

Hi rkc,

See this post for the non-windows client deploy tool:

http://forum.bigfix.com/viewtopic.php?id=1340

Jesse