Direct Deploy with Large Domains

[tzachk]

Hello Support,

Just tried our first direct deploy project.
It seems that to find out on which hosts the installer can install on, a request is made to the domain controller for a list of hosts, and then in a synchronous manner the direct deploy system goes over host by host in the list.
This method shall work fine with a very small domain but in a domain with thousands or tens of thousands of hosts it will take forever.
Is there a way to operate the direct deploy in an async manner, or have it juts fetch the list of hosts and create a report on which hosts it managed to install and on which not?

Regards,
T.

[FrancescoT]

Dear Tzachk,

unfortunately, it is not possible to run a script process asynchronously.

Honestly, Direct Deploy has been tested on large domain networks and we found acceptable its execution times.

Of course, It can be possible that with very large domain networks this can be different.
Anyway in such cases, the same performance effects (if not worse) may occur also with using the Microsoft's Group Policy deployment mechanism.

BTW, the entire InstallAware Direct Deploy process is not a closed box and its default behaviour, it is transparently implemented via IA script.
.... consequently it can be customized if required.

Regards

[tzachk]

Hi Francesco,

GPO shall work differently as it doesn't verify with each host if it has a software installed or not. Other deployment software packages that we use do not perform this test as well, as it takes too much time. We tested on our test domain with 20 machines and it took more than a minute to get the list. This is very long time considering the domain size.

Where can i find documentation on the customization capabilities of Direct Deploy?

Regards,
T.

[FrancescoT]

Dear Tzachk,

there isn't any documentation available for that.

As I said previously, Direct Deploy is entirely developed and available as IA script ... and if you want you can modify it as you like.
The script only uses IA commands.

Regards

[tzachk]

Dear Francesco,

One of the main reasons we upgraded to InstallAware 18 is because of the new Direct Deploy technology.
I now understand that direct deploy is merely a collection of IA commands with design that can not scale to large domains. If I want this "direct deploy" technology to be usable on large domains I need to alter it almost from scratch.

Can't say that I'm surprised consider previous experience with half baked features.

[FrancescoT]

Unfortunately, I have to ascertain that you're never satisfied.

Regards

[tzachk]

I would think that you should focus more on making your product working as expected, and features are well designed.
As it seems, you do more psychology consulting than support which probably explains a lot. Mainly when it comes for understanding how your software works.

Reading past replies from Installaware support personal, it is obvious that Installaware finds their clients annoying when remarking on failures of the software. We do apologize for wanting a return to what we paid for.

[FrancescoT]

Dear Tzachk,

it is a fact that it is not possible to satisfy everyone ... and as I already said previously, I have to ascertain that you're one of them.

As you can imagine, I don't agree at all your considerations and from all of them, how can it be possible that we can obscure an effective product feature when it is publicly available a full product trial?

... for sure, it seems that we missed to get paid for our psychology consulting ... as in this case.

Anyway, your point of view is totally clear and it is not the case to continue an unproductive discussion.

Thanks!