Problems with autoupdating packages
Hi
as many of us, I use PDQ Deploy in combination with PDQ Inventory (both enterprise) to keep many software packages up to date in our environment. Most of the time it works but from time to time I see some clients/packages, which are not up to date and I am not 100% sure where this comes from (maybe wrong config, maybe a wrong understanding about how things work, at least I think I've already found part of the the answer myself). I just explain what I did on the basis of one package (e.g. Adobe Reader DC).
I've created a schedule with the following settings:
- Package: Adobe Reader DC autodownload package
- targets: dynamic PDQ inventory list with old version of Adobe DC
- Trigger: Heartbeat
Just half an hour ago, I saw 4 clients which were not up-to-date although they were online. There was no failed deployment, they just didn't receive the current release. After reading the documentation again, I've learned that heartbeat means a change of offline/online status. As those 4 machines have been always on the last few days, I thought I've found the problem (thats the part, where I thought I've found a part of the answer myself :-))
So I've just triggered a heartbeat via PDQ Inventory but still nothing happened. But it was only after restarting the schedule in PDQ Deploy that all 4 machines immediatley started deploying the missing package.
So I face a couple of questions:
- Is this expected behaviour?
- If yes, whats the best way to accomplish my requirement?
- Do I need the retry setting in the package? As far as I understand I do not need it, because the client remains in the collection until it gets successfully updated.
- What does the setting "Stop deploying to targets once they succeed" do with schedules which are automatically updated via dynamic collections and autodownload packages?
- Is there some kind of intervall running in the background which would have made to autoupdate the clients in the background if I just would have waited long enough.
Thank you very much in advance for your help.
best regards
Joe
Comments
>Is this expected behaviour?
Yes. Heartbeat triggers only fire when targets go from Offline to Online in Inventory.
>If yes, whats the best way to accomplish my requirement?
I'd recommend adding another trigger to your schedule such as Daily.
>Do I need the retry setting in the package?
No, you do not need to use the Retry Queue.
>What does the setting "Stop deploying to targets once they succeed" do
The Target History tab of schedules keeps track of whether or not a target has successfully received a deployment. With that setting enabled, targets that have succeeded will not be deployed to until the Target History tab has been cleared (Auto Download does this automatically when it downloads a new version of a package).
>Is there some kind of intervall running in the background which would have made to autoupdate the clients in the background if I just would have waited long enough.
Only if those targets went from Offline to Online in Inventory. The default Heartbeat Interval is 5 minutes, so even if those targets get rebooted they may come back up before Inventory notices they went Offline.
Hi @...
great thanks for the information. Confirms what I have observed. The only thing I do not understand is, why did the deployment not start after manually triggering a heartbeat in PDQ Inventory?
Joe
Manually triggering a heartbeat only pings a computer. The Heartbeat trigger only fires when a computer's Online status goes from No to Yes.