August 15, 2001, 1:56 PM — Whether you are responsible for a network of 100 or 10,000 computers, deploying configurations to those systems is a tremendous undertaking that drains IT resources. A slowing economy, shrinking budgets, and burdened staffs demand that IT leaders find a way to streamline this vital task. PowerQuest Corp. aims to do just that with DeployCenter 5.0, a solution comparable to Symantec Corp.'s Ghost application suite.
Although sold as a single application, DeployCenter is a suite of utilities designed to simplify system deployment by duplicating and customizing system configurations across a network. Three basic elements come into play: system image creation, customization, and image propagation.
The core application for the first step, image creation, is ImageCenter, which provides the interface for duplicating the contents of any local drive or partition to any other local Windows drive. By default, you cannot create images of or to network drives; you can get around this, however, by creating and booting from a network boot diskette created with DeployCenter's Boot Disk Builder. Only a small assortment of commonly used network adapters is supported by default, but mercifully, you can add drivers for additional adapters. Whether you run ImageCenter from within Windows or from the boot diskettes, you will wind up in DOS, the only method by which ImageCenter can create or install a disk image.
In our tests, because the appropriate device drivers were not loaded, we were unable to see the hard drive on a Compaq Computer Corp. laptop. Also, using a parallel-port device while booting from a network floppy may cause the network to be inaccessible, further hampering ImageCenter's effectiveness on laptops, many of which use parallel-port storage devices.
After you've created a disk image, you may need to customize it before deploying the image. You can add or remove files and directories using ImageExplorer, or you can create custom, scripted image creation and deployment tasks with Task Builder and then run them at your leisure with ImageScheduler.
In addition, you can build differential image files using DeltaDeploy, which watches an installation program and creates a difference file after the installation completes. It creates a unified installation file that can be placed on a network drive and then pulled down manually or automatically. Unfortunately, because DeltaDeploy must scan all local file systems and the registry, and because it must be run for each application, the process of creating a set of installation files can be time-consuming. Also, the installation information must be pulled from the clients, so you must either implement a startup script to force the target computers to contact the server or instruct end-users to do so.
Images can be deployed in one of two ways: directly, using ImageCenter; or remotely, using the PowerCast Server. The PowerCast Server supports IPX/SPX and TCP/IP protocols and is accessed by way of a PowerCast DOS-mode client that will automatically search for the server session. As with ImageCenter, the PowerCast clients must be booted from DOS, although the server will run on Windows.
The final major component of DeployCenter is ControlCenter ST, a Web-based deployment console. PowerQuest based this program on Microsoft Corp.'s infamously insecure IIS (Internet Information Server), Microsoft SQL, and the MSDE (Microsoft Data Engine), resulting in an uninspiring mix of mediocre technologies. Although our testing did not unveil any undiscovered weaknesses in this combination, we recommend that servers using ControlCenter ST be protected.
Note, too, that the Agent portion of ControlCenter ST will run only on a limited subset of Windows: Windows NT with Service Pack 6a, Windows 98 SE, Windows 95C, Windows 2000 Pro, or Windows Me. Nevertheless, ControlCenter ST provides the valuable function of centralizing the administration of the other DeployCenter components.
Using Intel Corp.'s Wake-On-LAN technology, DeployCenter can automatically boot computers that are configured to be booted from across the network, can boot them to a virtual floppy on the network, and can cause PCs to execute preset tasks such as creating or deploying images or installing DeltaDeploy packages.
Unfortunately, ControlCenter ST's documentation is weak. Although the installation instructions for DeployCenter contain information about installing and performing the initial configuration of ControlCenter ST, the ControlCenter ST section of the documentation does not contain such information, nor does it contain a reference to the installation portion. Also, the instructions themselves are flawed, but any NT administrator worth his or her salt should be able to infer the correct steps to follow.
