Remko Weijnen's Blog (Remko's Blog)

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Archive for the ‘Altiris’ Category

Activate Multiple Altiris Licenses at Once

I have had to activate Altiris Licenses a lot in the past and this is a task that could be done in a few minutes however in the case of using the HP branded version (HP Insight Server control, previously named HP Rapid Deployment Pack) it’s not.

This is because HP delivers a seperate license for each server which you have to load manually. An annoying thing if you have a lot of them.

I was already looking if I could automate this with some kind of script since I know from the past that the Product Licensing Utility embeds the license into the Express.exe file.

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  • Filed under: Altiris
  • I was trying to install HP Insight Control server deployment (previously called HP Rapid Deployment Pack) on Sql Server 2008 Express. I will just call it Deployment Server or DS from here.

    I first installed SQL 2008 Express with Advanced Services and configured it to listen op Port 1433 as required by DS.

    The installation of the first part (Deployment Server version 6.9.4) indicated a successfull install but the prereqisuites check of the Hotfix version 2.0 installer failed on the last step:

    No Attached Consoles HP Deployment Server

    This was strange because I didn’t yet startup the console, so I decided to start it and close it as this would perhaps allow me to continue.

    The next screen was a clear indication something went wrong:

    Altiris Deploymeny Server Unable to Connect

    I presumed that the ODBC connection was missing so I went to Adminstrative Tools | Data Sources (ODBC). But the ODBC connection was present. I then fired up SQL Server Management Studio which showed me the eXpress database was missing.
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    Where to download HP Rapid Deployment Pack

    I have started the implementation of a VMWare vShphere environment in which we are going to use an Altiris server for Deployment. Since we are using HP Hardware I needed the HP Branded version of Altiris (it’s called HP Rapid Deployment Pack aka HP RDP).

    I had some troubles finding the download spot for it, that’s why I am sharing it here. Hopefully it will save others from a long search!

    Last time I needed HP RDP I just went to the HP website, clicked Support & Drivers then selected Download drivers and software and in the Editbox entered “HP Rapid Deployment Pack” which leads to this page:

    HPRDP1

    So where do we download it then?

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  • Filed under: Altiris
  • I noticed that XenApp 5 Feature Pack comes with a new version of the Web Interface (5.2) (it is also available as standalone download). The parameters to install it in silent mode have changed but there’s no documentation at all on the Citrix Site:

    WIDocs

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  • Filed under: Altiris, Citrix
  • A few days ago I noticed that an unattended installation of Citrix XenApp 5 was installing very slowly. When I looked at the various jobs and their installation time in the (Altiris) Deployment Server I saw that it was the Citrix Access Management Console that took almost 45 minutes to install:

    AMInstallation

    It was clear that this wasn’t normal since the install job is taking installing OS components like IIS and all subcomponents, activating Application Server and reboot in around 9 minutes. The installation of Citrix XenApp itsself takes only 14 minutes.

    I searched with Google and one of the first links was this knowledge base article from Citrix: Slow Access Management Console Installation on XenApp 5.0. The article clearly describes that the delay is occurred by failing checks for Publisher’s and Server Certificate Revocation (because there’s no Internet Connection) and suggests to turn these checks off. Indeed my servers do not have a direct internet connection so the cause and solution were clear.

    And actually I had seen similar issues before in other (non Citrix) installations, some examples are Exchange 2007 (here and here) and SQL Server 2008 (the SQL Installer actually checks if there’s an internet connection in the prerequisites check).

    The suggested, manual way, of turning of these checks is to clear the following checkboxes in Internet Explorer’s advanced settings Dialog:

    IECertificateRevocation

    But since I had to do this on many servers I decided it would be better to do it with a little VBS script.

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    I was deploying an unattended installation of Citrix XenApp 5.0 with Altiris Deployment Server. The installation consists of several prerequisites, the installation of XenApp and finally the Citrix Management Consoles.

    The installation is performed with a special account and not the Local System account because the install packages are located on the network.

    When testing the deployment on a Windows Server 2008 I noticed that sometimes MSI based installations would fail with error code 1603 or 1601.

    (more…)

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