Posted by Shane Corellian on Thu, May 24, 2012
For those of us who have worked in smaller companies, we know that not all server rooms are raised floor, precision cooled, glass walled, bio-metricly secured rooms.
However, it's not just the ma 'n pa companies that have server room issues. While consulting for a very large organization a while ago I was amazed that their server room, which housed easily 10 million bucks worth of hardware, was constantly plagued by cooling issues. When servers get hot, they turn themselves off, and that was happening on a nearly weekly basis for probably two months.
Upper management reacted by starting the requisition of over a million dollars worth of cooling equipment because obviously the existing AC was not sufficient.
After one such overheating episode I was discussing the ordeal with the lab manager when he said something that just didn't sound right.
"Yeah, another overheating. I guess I'm gonna have to turn the AC back on".
I stopped in my tracks. My brain must have been experiencing sensory overload. I looked at him and asked him to repeat. It turns out that his assistant had complained about the cool temperatures so the manager had, months ago, turned the AC off. Only after the upteenth shutdown did he think he may want to turn it back on.
A week later I walked in the lab I saw his assistant sitting at her desk in an oversized artic parka with a very noticable scowl on her face.
Alas, the list. Seven signs that your server room is lacking.
7. Server room door requires a door stop to stay closed
6. Carpet
5. The only electrical outlet is an extension cord fished through a crudely kicked hole in the wall
4. Room cooling exclusively provided by an open window
3. "Server Room" exists under the bosses desk
2. Redudant power means having two extension cords plugged into the same outlet
1. Removing one server requires advanced Jenga skills
Here's a photo collection of server room nightmares as collected by TechRepublic.
Posted by Adam Ruth on Fri, May 18, 2012
We're pleased to announce the availability of Beta 1 of PDQ Inventory 1.1.2. As always, you can download it from here. This beta is mostly fixes and a few features.
- Uninstall Applications
Applications can be uninstalled from the Applications Panel. This requires that the application have a silent "Uninstall String" value, which most will. This command can be executed with PDQ Inventory or copied and pasted to PDQ Deploy. We will improve the integration with PDQ Deploy in a future version.
- Integration support with the upcoming PDQ Deploy 2 beta. Deploy is moving to .NET 4 in version 2 and this requird changes to PDQ Inventory for the integration to work, so versions of PDQ Inventory earlier than this beta won't work with PDQ Deploy 2.
- Fixed a crash when upgrading from version 1.0.
- Fixed an issue with sending Wake-on-LAN to computers with multiple NICs.
- A few other small fixes, which can be viewed here.
As always we hope you enjoy the software and please let us know what more we can do in our Feature Request Forum.
Get the latest PDQ Inventory Beta
Posted by Shawn Anderson on Fri, May 11, 2012
Automatically keep computers to the same software level
One of the major features of PDQ Deploy Pro Mode is the ability to push software via the "Link To" feature.
Long time users of PDQ will be familiar with pushing to targets (computers that they choose during the time of deployment), but using Link To is a little different. The Link To feature is available when you schedule a deployment. It comes in very handy when you schedule a recurring deployment. For example, if you want to ensure that all workstations with Office 2007 are running Service Pack 3 then you could create a Collection (in PDQ Inventory) which contains all workstations missing Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 3 and then have your Office SP 3 Installer "Link To" that collection. You could set your recurring schedule to deploy SP 3 every Friday at 6 PM. Every Friday Office 2007 SP3 will be deployed to the member computers of this collection. Computers that successfully receive the deployment will be (at the next Inventory scan) removed from this collection.
OK, that's a little long winded. It's tough to explain, but very easy to show. So, in typical Shane format, he created a video to demonstrate how to push Office 2007 SP3 to all computers that have Office 2007 SP2, not just now, but on a daily or weekly basis. (If you only need to push once then you won't need to create a schedule or link, just deploy it).
Here's the video. Please give it a whirl. This is one of the truly advanced features of PDQ Deploy Pro Mode that we are really stoked about.
You can also Link To computes via Active Directory, Spiceworks and Target Lists.
Posted by Shane Corellian on Tue, May 08, 2012
This is an update to a previous, now outdated, article describing how you can deploy Foxit Reader 4.x. Foxit has removed the deploy ability of their standard free Reader application. In order to deploy Foxit Reader you need to use the Foxit Enterprise Reader. Don't worry, this is still free. You can register to receive this download here.
The great thing about the Enterprise Reader is that it isn't garbled up with the ebay or ask.com add-ons.
Here is the PDQ Deploy installer window for my Foxit Installer. Notice that I added the DESKTOP_SHORTCUT=0 property to my parameters field. This way my end users won't see the Foxit shortcut on their desktops.
Here are some additional properties that you may want to disable. To modify an MSI property just add it to your Parameters field (like I did with DESKTOP_SHORTCUT=0). These settings are enabled, by default. If you want to disable them just pass the property name with a "=0".
MAKEDEFAULT (When enabled, this setting will make Foxit Reader the default PDF application and will associate all .PDF files with Foxit.
LAUNCHCHECKDEFAULT (When application starts up it will verify that Foxit is the default PDF reader)
VIEW_IN_BROWSER (This will allow PDF files to be read in your web browser)
STARTMENU_SHORTCUT (Place Foxit shortcut in Start menu)
DESKTOP_SHORTCUT ( I disabled the Foxit desktop shortcut in my installer)
If you didn't want Foxit Reader to be your default PDF application you would add MAKEDEFAULT=0 to your Parameters field.
Once you're ready to deploy it, choose the Deploy Now button from your main PDQ Deploy window, choose your targets and you should be good to go.
***NOTE*** If you have an earlier version of Foxit (and that version isn't the Enterprise version) then you will need to uninstall the older version before you can install the new Foxit. If you are using PDQ Deploy in Pro Mode, then you can accomplish this by create a new Command Action. Click on New Action and select Command. In the Command to Run field type
"%ProgramFiles%\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\unins000.exe" /silent.
If you have Foxit installed on some 64 bit versions of Windows you can create another command action and use this for the Command to run:
"%ProgramFiles(x64)%\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\unins000.exe" /silent
If you have Foxit version 4 installed, then instead of unins000.exe you would run (change to x64 if needed)
"%ProgramFiles%\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\uninstall.exe" /u
Highlight the original Action (it should be Action 1) and press the Move Down button until it is below the two new Command actions. On your command actions uncheck the "Stop Deployment if this Action fails" box. This way if an earlier version of Foxit doesn't exist the error returned won't prevent the following actions (most notably the action which installs Foxit Enterprise Reader) from running. You can also just add the number 3 to the Successful Return Codes field as error 3 means unins000.exe couldn't be found.
