enterprise issues help

ranjitcool

Hey Guys,

I have asked on private message to one of the experts however i am posting my concerns here.

for an enterprise server,

What do you guys use for updating all the servers does any one use SCCM 2007?

also how do u install or do bare metal installs on servers.

Also do you use any batch script management software ? How do you manage batch scripts?

please advice

Thanks
RJ

nel

If you are talking about just windows updates then we do everything manually (on servers that is) after vigorous testing to ensure the update does not screw up our production servers and its software.

For our desktops we use wsus. Although ive never used sccm before i assume you will have to pay for it its for a large scale enterprise roll out. It will probably cost big bucks too but most large companies are going towards centralising data centres.

ranjitcool

Thanks for your reply.

Well we use big fix to update servers and like you said after testing them on test, development and then eventually production.

It sometimes is ineffcient and hence we are looking at something else. Is wsus free ?

Also it wouldnt be possible to update manually about 300 servers that my team manages so we were looking at sccm and although there are altiris and other management suites out there.. we are not sure as they are very expensive. Altiris charges 80 bucks per license. 24k for the whole!

Also any ideas about batch management software ?

thanks
RJ

dynamik

It depends on your needs. You could get by with WSUS, SCCM has a lot of additional functionality which might be overkill if you just need to do basic patch management. I'm also looking at SCE, which is the "Essentials" version of SCCM. It's a great package for smaller businesses, and it's only $2-3k (depending on what you go with for SQL).

Edit: Ah, 300 servers is way too many for SCE.

ranjitcool

Thanks Dynamik,

SCE, i will look into it. well 300 servers is only what my team manages, other teams manage many more servers. We are mainly focused not only patch management, but on bare metal installs, which we do occasionally.

SCCM does baremetal installs, but I was wondering if there were any other softwares that did the same(well in a way having a pxe boot server helps but never tried it) I am still testing the sccm in our test envi. and most of it works but like you said its pretty intense.

Also apart from these, one of the important issues we are trying to address are monitoring of the servers. We do use zenos and other tools, but we were looking for something much more better or dependable. SCCM offers some monitoring stuff.

I am trying to get you all's opinions coz u guys are up there, you know

thanks
rj

nel

Sounds like money is an issue so i would go for wsus then. Its free and will do the basic patch management you need.

We would use wsus for the same but there is a large variety in all of our systems and its too risky most of the time as our production systems have very bad tempers some days ...anything can put there knickers in a twist and they will go down!

check out the wsus site: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/default.aspx

Just stick it on some half decent hardware and plenty of disk space for those updates.

EDIT: you's must have quite a few servers if that is only one department. Put some idea's across but im very suprised you's havent got something like wsus runnin at a bare minimum. Most organisation with that no. of servers i have seen go for a paid for package like altiris etc.

ranjitcool

Oh thanks for the input nel

what do you use for monitoring ?


rj

astorrs

I've used/worked with companies that use SCCM/WSUS and others that primarily use Altiris Client Management Suite (now owned by Symantec). Personally I prefer the Altiris solution (the other modules are great too) but there is a substantial cost involved in a large environment.

Altiris Deployment Server (a part of the Server Management Suite) is excellent and my largest clients use that (1000's of servers).

ranjitcool

Hey Astorrs,

thanks for the reply, so i would have to buy a license for each server i manage right ? (altiris deployment solution)

or do i buy one server license and manage as many as i want ?

please let me know

thanks
rj