Speed up your deployment of Altiris NS Agents

In order to speed up the roll-out of NS Agents I use following method and vbs script

• First of all create two collections : one with all major agents ( == the agents you want to install ) installed and one with not all major agents installed
• Assign each of these collections to an Agent Configuration where the collection with not all major agents will request a config every 5 minutes and the other one with all major agents your default config request time
  
• Create for every agent that you want to install a collection which gives you the resources without this agent installed
  
• Create a VB script ( requires Altiris ADSK to work ) that will run every 5 minutes ( done with MS scheduling ) which will force a collection update of the previous defined collections
  

'---------------------------------------

' Setup management objects

'---------------------------------------

set collectionManagement = CreateObject("Altiris.ASDK.NS.CollectionManagement")

collectionManagement.TargetServer = "localhost"

collectionManagement.Authenticate()
'---------------------------------------

' UpdateCollections

'---------------------------------------

Rem Name: Pc's with all Major Agents installed ( SWD, Metering, Patch, CC, Aclient )

collectionManagement.UpdateCollections("{guid of your collection}")

Rem Name: Pc's with Not all Major Agents installed ( SWD, Metering, Patch, CC, Aclient )

collectionManagement.UpdateCollections("{guid of your collection}")

Rem Name: All Windows Computers without Software Update Agent

collectionManagement.UpdateCollections("{guid of your collection}")

Rem Name: Windows Computers with no Software Delivery Solution Agent

collectionManagement.UpdateCollections("{guid of your collection}")

Rem Name: All Windows Computers without Software Update Agent

collectionManagement.UpdateCollections("{guid of your collection}")

Rem Name: All Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 Computers with no Altiris Agent installed

collectionManagement.UpdateCollections("{guid of your collection}")

...........

Get your stopwatch ready and measure how fast your machines are equipped with all the right agents ...

If you find this post helpfull please leave a comment and don't forget to click on an AD ;-)

Thx,

Gert

Need a little help managing Software License Compliance Suite

http://juice.altiris.com/question/948/need-a-little-help-managing-software-license-compliance-suite

Q:
We have the CMS Level 1 and Software License Compliance Suite. The purpose of the SLC Suite was to enter software license purchase information into the NS dbase and have that license information check against the software information collected in the Inventory Solution. How do I configure the Software License Compliance Suite to simply allow me to enter software purchase info (software name, date purchased, quantity, etc.) and view a report that shows me my total number of purchased software licenses versus my total number of installed licenses for one or more software applications?

The Asset Control and Contract Management Solution Product Guide is CRAZY! What I need is someone’s Best Practices guide that lays out procedures for initial configuration, procedures for inputing new software purchase info, and relevant reports showing compliance status.

A:
The following is the standard way in which I work with software contracts:

1. Browse to the Resouces tab > Resources > Contact Types Software Licensing > Software Purchase and create a new software purchase. This is where you can enter the name, product description, quantity and license count.
2. Once you have completed this, in the same tree view, browse to Software Licensing > Win32 License and create a new software (Win32) license.
   1. To add the software purchase created earlier, browse to the Software Purchases tab and add a rule to have it automatically add all software purchases created with the similar naming convention, or manually add the purchase under "Other Software Purchases."
   2. To match the discovered software (Inventory Solution) to the contract, browse to the Software Installs tab and under "Software License Search Rules" click "Add List." This wizard allows you to search and select the discovered software and attach the rule to the license.
   3. After you have applied all the changes, you can now browse back to the Summary tab (only available after you have created the license and applied changes) to view Installed vs. Purchased.

Adding Software License Types

http://juice.altiris.com/tip/4936/adding-software-license-types

If you would like to track other types of software licenses other than "Concurrent" or "Per Installed Node", you can add your own. For example "Per Processor" or "Enterprise".