Bootstrapping Client Installs

[CameronL]

Hi All,

I am in the middle of trying to devise the client deployment strategy for a version upgrade and general tightening up of governance and process controls for sas.  A requirement is to deploy a set suite of clients for different types of users based on use cases.  I made the (possibly stupid) remark in a meeting that we might be able to bootstrap these deployments via a custom installer for each use case.  Has anyone had any experience in developing custom installers for deploying multiple SAS clients? (ANT Installer, Wix etc.)   

I'm really interested in;

1. What tools you used to do this
2. Any issues you encountered. In particular with patch upgrades, profiling the target machine etc.
3. Any advice for success.

Thanks in advance.

Cam

[Mark_sas]

The SAS Deployment Wizard's record/playback functionality should be able to help you out here.  You can capture a response file for each of your use cases by running through Deployment Wizard's dialog flow specifying the clients you want deployed.  You can then drive your client deployments silently by specifying the response files in provisioned calls to the Deployment Wizard.

Details can be found in the "Record and Playback" section of the SAS Deployment Wizard User's Guide at:

http://support.sas.com/documentation/installcenter/en/ikdeploywizug/64204/PDF/default/user.pdf.

There's also a relevant white paper (soon to be updated for SCCM) on this approach at:

http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/290-2008.pdf

- Mark

[justageek]

The responsefiles will do everything you need and are documented well. I have used & reused them numerous times.

[SASKiwi]

We also do automated SAS client installs and from our experience make the following suggestions:

1) Keep the number of types of deployments to a minimum. Each deployment type requires its own development and testing which can be significant. We ended up doing just one deployment for all client tools and controlling access via metadata security. If a particular client tool is only required on a few workstations (say up to 5), consider doing this manually as it will save a lot of time.

2) Test on multiple PCs to iron out any gotchas. One that caught us out, is that if a PC does not have the pre-requisite software it needs to go through the SAS install process twice with at least one reboot in the middle. Your scripting tool will need to cater for this.

3) Deploy off a complete SAS Software depot on a network share. Its a lot easier and quicker than copying it all down to a local drive.