Benefits of deploying with pdqDeploy
Justifying here getting pdqdeploy.
In the past i've used some powershell scripts that deploy, however you have to connect to each computer do do this, which obviously is not efficient. The other option would be to use group policy. I've attempted to use group policy in the past, but ran into hangups. I may be wrong about this, but in my experience, if you begin using GPO to deploy, then run into a problem, you are kind of locked into it and its kind of a mess to move back to a manual deployment. Is this correct? I'm guessing this is the beauty of installing with pdqDeploy is that it isn't locked in in that way.
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Hi John. Speaking for myself, I haven't run into that limitation when deploying with a GPO. There are limitations to deploying via GPO but I haven't seen that particular issue.
A big benefit to using PDQ Deploy is the speed of both building a package and deploying it. When it is used in conjunction with PDQ Inventory you have a nice, solid framework for software deployments and inventory.
It certainly does seem to be fast. What are the benefits to moving to the paid version of Inventory?
You can see a comparison between free and pro mode here.
There are quite a few benefits. Fewer manual scans for starters. You can schedule your various inventory scans and customize what you want to have scanned. You can also scan the registry and files. You can configure PDQ Deploy to initiate a scan after targets have successfully received a deployment. This means you can very quickly see which computers need certain software, updates or new configurations without having to always initiate a new scan.
You can also create and save new reports (with Free mode you cannot save new reports). You can many of your favorite utilities to run against specific target computers from within PDQ Inventory. For example, let's say you use IntelliAdmin for Remote Control. You could configure PDQ Inventory to initiate an IntelliAdmin RC session against a target computer from within the Inventory console.
So a question about a possible disadvantage. If you use group policy, updates are likely installed on reboot prior to logging in. I work in a library environment where we have a large number of public computers but also staff computers. The public computers are simple...I just push to them and reboot when done before we are open to the public (or schedule it to happen overnight). How would you work around staff computers? It seems that on most installers you can prevent reboot, but they still need to rebooted. How would you notify people of that need? Also, several things would require killing the browser. I suppose you just tell people not to leave the browser open overnight? Just trying to think through how I would handle the entire process.
Hi John,
Quote: "How would you notify people of that need?" (To reboot).
Answer: You don't have to. You can plan a shutdown/reboot at the end of the day using the pdqdeploy schedule.
Quote: "Also, several things would require killing the browser. I suppose you just tell people not to leave the browser open overnight? Just trying to think through how I would handle the entire process."
Answer: The same way you do now. Although, the Java package already tells browsers to shutdown/close during the installation. The majority of them anyways. Basically just kills a .exe that's running in the processes. Modify script for the browser you guys use, and you should be good to go.
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