Altiris in Belgium

Monday, 1 December 2008

Making your TFTP downloads, necessary for WinPE, faster

To increase the TFTP server block size do the following,

Open up the PXE configuration utility
Select the Multicast tab
In the Packet Size text box, change the value from 768 to 1456

Click to view.
Click 'Save' to push these settings to the TFTP server
Click 'OK' to exit the PXE configuration Utility

Try imaging with PXE now -your TFTP transfer time of the PXE image should now betwice as fast! Not bad for a minutes work at the console.

How To Add VMware Flexible NIC Driver For WinPE 2.1 x86/x64 Automation

By default, WinPE 2.1 x86/x64 supports the VMware NIC model e1000. When
possible, use this NIC model with your virtual machines. However, a
virtual machine created for Windows 2003 x86 Standard Edition can only
use the VMware Flexible NIC which is not supported by default.
To add VMware Flexible NIC support into the WinPE 2.1 x86/x64 automation
environment:
1.       On the Deployment Server, copy the VMware Tool ISO file from a
VMware ESX Server at /vmimages/tools-isoimages/windows.iso or create a
physical CD-ROM.
2.       Mount or extract the VMware Tool for ESX Server ISO/CD-ROM.
3.       Run the PXE Configuration utility.
4.       Select WinPE Managed boot menu option and click Edit.
5.       Click Edit Boot Image. The Altiris Boot Disk Creator will run.
6.       At Step 9, click Edit.
7.       At Step 1, click Next.
8.       At Step 2, click Have Disk.
9.       Click Browse and browse to the VMware Tool for ESX Server
ISO/CD-ROM contents and its \Program Files\VMware\VMware
Tools\Drivers\vmxnet\win2k\32bit directory.
10.      Select the vmware-nic.inf file and click Open. If prompted that
driver is an unsupported class type, click Yes and click Ok.
11.      Repeat step 7 through 9 to select the x64 driver, vmxnet.inf,
from the VMware Tool for ESX Server ISO/CD-ROM contents and its \Program
Files\VMware\VMware Tools\Drivers\vmxnet\win2k\64bit directory.
12.      Continue with the Boot Disk Creator wizard to generate the
WinPE images.
13.      After the wizard completes, click Save.
12.      After the save completes, click OK. It will take several
minutes for the PXE server to replicate the PXE images.

Using WinPE 2.1 with VMWare virtual machines

You must use Intel E1000 network card emulation instead of AMD pcnet network card emulation. See http://juice.altiris.com/tip/2919/tweaking-vmware-work-winpe-2x-and-microsoft-vista for instructions.
Excerpts from the link:

The following works for VMware WorkStation 5.5 and 6.0 and VMware Server 1.0+. By make the following alterations, WinPE 2.x will work seamlessly with network drivers.

Make sure VMware is not running. Stop any virtual machines running and close VMware.
Browse to the Virtual machine files and open the .vmx file with your favorite text editor.
Add the following to the <Path to VM> .vmx file:
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
This is right after the ethernet0.present = "TRUE".
Save the changes.
Start your virtual machine.

Virtual machines with installed operating systems such as Microsoft Windows Vista or Microsoft Windows XP might have an issue with the drivers after this change. Change the network drivers and point to c:\windows\system32 for the drivers. Or download the latest e1000(Intel) driver.

Client Agent Version Report Discrepancy

Article ID: 31475

Problem/Symptoms

Client Agent Version Report displays different client counts on the Level 0 and Level 1 sections of the report

Cause

Level 0 SQL query uses vItem view and Level 1 SQL query uses vComputer view. vComputer filters out retired assets.

Resolution

Change the Level 0 SQL query to query the vComputer view. Replace all instances of vItem in the level 0 query with vComputer.

Tuesday, 23 September 2008

Speed up your deployment of Altiris NS Agents

In order to speed up the roll-out of NS Agents I use following method and vbs script

First of all create two collections : one with all major agents ( == the agents you want to install ) installed and one with not all major agents installed
Assign each of these collections to an Agent Configuration where the collection with not all major agents will request a config every 5 minutes and the other one with all major agents your default config request time
Create for every agent that you want to install a collection which gives you the resources without this agent installed
Create a VB script ( requires Altiris ADSK to work ) that will run every 5 minutes ( done with MS scheduling ) which will force a collection update of the previous defined collections

'---------------------------------------

' Setup management objects

'---------------------------------------

set collectionManagement = CreateObject("Altiris.ASDK.NS.CollectionManagement")

collectionManagement.TargetServer = "localhost"

collectionManagement.Authenticate()
'---------------------------------------

' UpdateCollections

'---------------------------------------

Rem Name: Pc's with all Major Agents installed ( SWD, Metering, Patch, CC, Aclient )