Expanding On Altiris By Mike Langford GreatWest Life

Expanding On Altiris By Mike Langford Great-West Life

Automation through Scripting PSExec. exe - a light-weight telnet-replacement that lets you execute processes on other systems. (http: //technet. microsoft. com/enus/sysinternals/bb 897553. aspx) Advantages Faster Automation - i. e. agent installation through logon script Perform Task on Entire List of Machines Configuration Installation Updates, Basic Inventory, and Agent

Updating Configuration ' Updating Configuration Through VBScript ' Declare variables Dim Client ' Create the NS Client object Set Client = Create. Object("Altiris. Ae. XNSClient") ' Ask the client's policy manager to refresh the configuration Client. Policy. Mgr. Refresh ' Clean up Set Client = Nothing

Creating Collections Scripted Collection Creation (Scripting plus basic xml) Why? Import. Export. Util. exe (%Program. Files%AltirisNotification ServerbinImport. Export. Util. exe) Syntax to import an xml file silently Import. Export. Util. exe /import /q collection. xml

Collection XML Non-Static Items Item guid – can be generated by guid generation method in script. Name (in two places) – Any string value CDATA – Select Statement that must return a list of resource guids Parent Folder Guid – Can be retrieved by right-clicking and viewing the properties of a folder in NS.

Custom Inventory (Scripting, XML, and Altiris Inventory Agents) What can you do with a custom inventory? Collect data on certain files without including all with that extension Collect values from the registry Collect values from inside INI files

Custom Inventory XML Non-Static Items Name – Any string value (two places) Inv_<Name> will be the name of your new custom data class RS Name – These turn into the column headers in the new custom data class Row - Data you want to capture

Custom Inventory INI . XML file is turned into. NSI by Custom Inventory Agent aexcustinv. exe /in. yourfile. xml /out yourfile. nsi . NSI data is collected and sent up to the Notification server aexnsinvcollector. exe /hidden /nsctransport /v default /useguid

Collecting Custom Inventory Set up a task in Notification Server Run: Ae. XInv. Soln. exe Command line: /hidden /s yourfile. ini

ASDK The ASDK - http: //altirisdl. com/eval/Altiris_ASDK_1_3. exe Examples

Imports through Custom NSE’s What is an NSE? What can you do with them? NSE XML Structure Examples Hardware Request Form Custom Barcode Solution

NSE Structure <to>guid</to> - What piece of Altiris will be handling the import. (i. e. Inventory Forwarding Process, Connector Solution Process) <resource> - Holds all the basic asset attribute data type. Guid=“guid” – What type of asset is it? (computer, monitor, printer, etc. ) name=“string value“ – What is the assets name? You can set the assets name through this field Guid = “guid” – What is the existing asset’s guid, or what will the new assets guid be? <resource. Associations> type. Guid=“guid” - What type of association are you making? child. Resource. Guid=“guid” – What are you associating the asset with?

NSE Structure cont. <inventory. Class> - This is the section where data class and custom data class information can be set. Basically any data that is not an association Guid =“guid” – What is the guid of the data class you are updating? <row c 1=“value“ c 2=“value” c 3=“value” etc. /> - Sets the values of each column specified with your information (c 1 = column 1, c 2 = column 2, etc. )