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NSMC 4.0
by Bob Kelly

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Software Distribution

For those that have embraced Group Policy for deployment and have taken the steps necessary to migrate all their deployment packages to MSI files- you’ll be well prepared to take advantage of NSMC’s deployment features. Yes, packages must be in Windows Installer format for deployment using NSMC. Need for an MSI formatted deployment package has always been a glaring shortcoming of Group Policy and it is largely considered as key driver to move toward a more robust system. INSYSTEK does soften the blow by providing documentation including helpful documentation such as their paper on how to go about wrapping a legacy setup.exe into an MSI package using InstallShield Express.

The "Add Package Wizard" lets you specify an MSI path, command line options, any dependency files, a name and description. From there, the package is copied to the package servers you have specified and the package is available for assignment to one or more managed devices.

For actual package distribution you must have a Package Server and a Distribution Server. A Package Server holds packages, while a Distribution Server holds the packages and is the point for distribution to systems. These two sites can be separate.

When scheduling the package for distribution, there are some great features for redistribution in the event of failure (see image at right).

Performance and Availability Monitoring

With NSMC’s performance and availability monitoring features, you can stay ahead of potential network issues, proactively monitor services and processes. By creating monitoring policies, you can choose what you want to watch, at what interval and what values dictate a harmless, warning, minor, critical, or fatal situation. You can then specify pager, email and audio alerts for each of these thresholds.



This can be a very handy feature, allowing administrators to be notified of low disk space, excessive paging, or anything else you might associate with performance monitoring.
 

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