VictorySabre
Technical User
Hi All,
Our company is presently using SMS 1.2 on our network and we only really started to make more use out of it in recent months. I'll list out what we presently do with it and I'm curious to know if upgrading to SMS 2.0 will make my tasks easier than how I am doing it with SMS 1.2.
With SMS 1.2, we want to keep track software installed on our client PCs on the network. We create an SMS Inventory Package for each software we want to scan and specify what "unique" file in each software version will be used to identify this software. Then periodically, an SMS Inventory Job would be issued to determine if the PC has this software installed.
Now doing this on a few handful of software isn't too bad, but now that we have a large base of software on the network and different versions of the software are always available, making an inventory package for each software and the different versions is taking up a large amount of labour. Does SMS 2.0 make it easier to create inventories or will it be smart enough to look at the executables and determine what version of software was installed?
To ensure we have up-to-date software that isn't obsolete, we want to be able to remotely deploy software to our client PCs. Now SMS Installer can be used to take a snapshot before and after and create an executable package that contains all the software, but because we have different PCs, configurations, etc that needs to be supported, a pre-packaged installation doesn't seem to work well for us. I have considered making a package where it would cause the installation to log on as an administrator to that machine, uninstall the old software and install the new software. Unfortuantely, it seems to take a lot of time to create this kind of package and test it. Does SMS 2.0 help us in any way to make this easier? We support Win9x, NT4, and W2K machines with different PC models, makes, and configuration.
I am interested in your feedback as we are looking into upgrading to SMS 2.0 later this summer, but if SMS 2.0 is not the ideal solution, we want to know so that we can evaluate other better solutions.
Many thanks,
Edward
Our company is presently using SMS 1.2 on our network and we only really started to make more use out of it in recent months. I'll list out what we presently do with it and I'm curious to know if upgrading to SMS 2.0 will make my tasks easier than how I am doing it with SMS 1.2.
With SMS 1.2, we want to keep track software installed on our client PCs on the network. We create an SMS Inventory Package for each software we want to scan and specify what "unique" file in each software version will be used to identify this software. Then periodically, an SMS Inventory Job would be issued to determine if the PC has this software installed.
Now doing this on a few handful of software isn't too bad, but now that we have a large base of software on the network and different versions of the software are always available, making an inventory package for each software and the different versions is taking up a large amount of labour. Does SMS 2.0 make it easier to create inventories or will it be smart enough to look at the executables and determine what version of software was installed?
To ensure we have up-to-date software that isn't obsolete, we want to be able to remotely deploy software to our client PCs. Now SMS Installer can be used to take a snapshot before and after and create an executable package that contains all the software, but because we have different PCs, configurations, etc that needs to be supported, a pre-packaged installation doesn't seem to work well for us. I have considered making a package where it would cause the installation to log on as an administrator to that machine, uninstall the old software and install the new software. Unfortuantely, it seems to take a lot of time to create this kind of package and test it. Does SMS 2.0 help us in any way to make this easier? We support Win9x, NT4, and W2K machines with different PC models, makes, and configuration.
I am interested in your feedback as we are looking into upgrading to SMS 2.0 later this summer, but if SMS 2.0 is not the ideal solution, we want to know so that we can evaluate other better solutions.
Many thanks,
Edward