I need further explanation of the "Stop Deploying to computers if they fail" setting
Hello,
First off, these products rock. I'm working a 2500 desktop shop spread out geographically and I couldn't be happier with this tool set. We are finally able to patch systems regularly with little effort.
For the "Stop deploying to computers if they fail x times" setting, does this failure count apply to the schedule as a whole, or that particular deployment of the schedule?
For example, I have many deployments set to deploy on intervals of y days. Does this setting mean it will stop deploying after x failures for that particular deployment of the interval, and then reset the count for the next interval deployment? Or is it counting failures for that schedule as a whole so that it would stop deploying for all subsequent intervals? If the answer is the former, then it would make more sense for this setting to be nested under the "Offline Settings" so that it would only be available if you enable the retry queue. If the answer is the latter, then it would be nice to have an option for failures per deployment and failures per schedule.
I could ask the same question regarding the "Stop deploying to computers once they succeed."
Thanks,
Daniel
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Comments
Details on this page
http://documentation.adminarsenal.com/PDQDeploy/6.0.3.0/index.html?schedule_window.htm
This does not answer the question. The link is the standard document that says the same as the help file, form within PDQ Deploy.
This is what the help/link says:
"Stops deploying to computers once they fail a certain number of times. Setting to 0 will allow unlimited attempts."
My question is a bit different. But I am interested in some official answers on the OP’s questions.
Here is what I wonder:
If i set an autodeploy for Adobe Reader to every day, (with immediate approval), and set the failure to 2 times.
How will that work?
Will it try do deploy 2 times for this package, right after one another or one at the set time for day One and another time for day Two?
Regardless of the answer on the above question, will it reset when PDQ deploy auto approves the next version of Adobe Reader?
To answer the OP's question: the failure count applies to the current deployment.
For example, you have a schedule set up to deploy on an interval of 7 days to 100 machines. The first one runs, and only 90 machines receive the deployment. Based on what you've scheduled in your retry queue/interval and your "Stop deploying to computers if they fail X times," the 10 failed machines will retry the deployment until they meet that fail threshold of X times. Let's say you've set that to five, and during the time they are in the retry queue, 5 receive the deployment and 5 do not. Now it's 7 days later and the schedule runs again. This time, all but the 5 that failed previously (and never received the deployment) succeed. Again, the 5 failed machines go into the retry queue and attempts 5 attempts are made to update them, etc.
The reason that this is not nested under "Offline Settings" is that a failure doesn't necessarily indicate the computer is offline. There may be many reasons why the deployment fails while the machine is online such as: a pending restart, user is logged in (when a condition is that a user not be logged in) or its opposite, an install step was unable to run for a particular reason (e.g. a file is in use).
And to answer the question in the previous comment, it is reset at each schedule and begins anew.
Thanx for clearing that up!
Bumping a very old topic but looking for clarification on this:
To verify, it seems that each deployment attempt is kept track of individually.
I.e.:
If a computer fails 3 times, it will stop deploying. Come next Monday, will that counter be reset to 0 and the deployment will attempt computers that failed last week or will they "forever" not attempt to deploy again?
Follow-up:
How is 'Stop deploying to targets once they succeed' handled? Does this again "reset" each week? I.e. if I update the MSI but nothing else about the package (I don't put version in the package name like the PDQ library packages do) will this package run on the linked 'Software (Old)' group pending I've updated PDQ Inventory to re-calculate who is an appropriate member of that group?
Answered one of my own questions: It doesn't appear that the 'Stop deploying to targets once they succeed' applies to an individual instance of a scheduled deployment. I created a PS deployment that ran 'Start-Process -FilePath "notepad"' and scheduled it to run every minute. The scheduled deployment would only run once with 'Stop deploying to targets once they succeed' enabled. I changed the PS script, I changed the title, and still only one run. Once I unchecked the option for 'Stop deploying' it ran every minute.
This leads me to believe that for ongoing scheduled deployments, such as weekly Adobe Reader package deployments, that the 'Stop deploying to targets once they succeed' should be unchecked, otherwise machines will only received the first scheduled deployment and once they successfully update once they will no longer update in the future.