BDD Scenarios: Automating Application Deployment
Introduction
In order for a newly deployed computer to be immediately useful, it is necessary to install the application packages that the users of the computer require to do their day-to-day work. These applications, if used by the majority of users, can be included in the operating system image itself. But in many cases, the needs of different groups of clients, or even of individual clients, are different, requiring a different list of applications for each computer. It also may be necessary to install hardware-specific applications (for example, DVD players, CD-ROM burning software, or OEM management agents) since including such applications in the image itself could result in a very large image that would be difficult to deploy and keep up-to-date. The SMS 2003 OS Deployment Feature Pack supports the installation of applications as part of the deployment process, but does not provide a way to dynamically build this list. Using only the OS Deployment Feature Pack, it would be necessary to define a different program, collection, and advertisement for each unique combination, which would quickly become unmanageable. As an alternative, standard SMS 2003 software distribution, based on inventory-driven collections, could be used, but this would introduce delays ranging from minutes to hours before these applications would be installed. To work around these limitations, the Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment Enterprise Edition includes the ability to install a dynamically generated list of applications. This is described in the Zero Touch Installation Deployment Feature Team Guide. The following scenarios are described in the sections below:
All of these scenarios assume that the application package list is manually specified, either through a configuration file (CustomSettings.ini) or database queries. This places the burden on IT administrators to determine which applications should be installed. To remove this burden, three additional scenarios are described:
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