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Specops Deploy 3.0 by Bob Kelly	Page 2 of 6 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Installation

A very intuitive setup assistant is provided to ensure you have all the requirements necessary as well as to help you with the actual server and client installation of Specops Deploy itself.

As you can see from the screen shot of the Specops Deploy Setup Assistant, my server was missing MSMQ. I did need my Server Installation CD to complete the installation, but pressing the “Install MSMQ” button completely automated the installation of this prerequisite. For a database, you can use the included MSDE or SQL Server, for SQL Server 2000 SP3 or later is required (I needed to install SP3). 

The client installation actually walks you through creating a GPO for the Microsoft .NET Framework and the Specops Deploy GPO Extension and assigning it to target systems. Because Specops Deploy uses Group Policy natively, the Specops Deploy GPO Extension is simply a single dll which is only loaded when in use. Instructions are actually carried out by Group Policy using this extension to provide its enhanced capabilities.

Installation of the Admin Tools (The Specops Deploy Control Center) requires Windows XP or later, so I was unable to install it on my server which was a Windows 2000 server. However, the Control Center can be run from anywhere on the network; installing this on another system was quick and easy.

Overall installation was surprisingly simple considering the actual complexity of getting the prerequisites installed and client extensions deployed. The installation of the server and my test clients (even with my fumbling for CDs) took only about a half an hour.
 

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