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! Upgrade to a Modern BSA version! - (at least in your lab!) - (8.2 SP4+/8.3 SP1+ preferred as of early August 2013) - Actually, much of this Just Works, and has for a long =me.
! Start with a known working package, or test installs on already-‐built boxes,
! Don't use automated provisioning to test so4ware install commands un=l you know they work (poten=ally very long lead =me & very frustra=ng) - Build one “fresh” instance of the machine and work on the install on that machine
! Don’t delete So4ware Deploy Jobs, change their payloads or targets (dependency trees)
Strengths / Weaknesses of Different Kinds of Packages
! BLPackage - Very strong roll-‐back, stop-‐on failure, XML-‐based, parameterizable, can include all kinds of objects. Great for packaging in-‐house apps from components: baked in parameteriza=on. -‐> then usually need to add post-‐install commands
- Great way to bake process into deployment, pre-‐flight checks, ability to check state, roll back on error, prevent further deployment etc.
- Trivially package adding user accounts, service stop/start, bake most configura=on items into process without needing to know command lines & trap failure modes.
- Many files: In older versions some issues seen with many many files (10-‐100k+) as every instruc=on needs to be read/parsed/executed + rollback stored. Consider using a zip file to extract many files.
- Also only does so well with very large files (Several GB+). - Supports repeaters - Nothing wrong with wrapping "net use" into a BLPackage if it's significantly faster to do/there is good organized fileserver availability in your org.
Strengths / Weaknesses of Different Kinds of Packages
! So4ware Packages (OS-‐specific): - Generally berer handling for OS-‐specific packages (MSIEXEC, Solaris SysV answer files, etc.), but OOTB examples are dated at this point.
- Supports repeaters
! File Deploy Job: - "rsync-‐like" characteris=cs, works with any file anywhere there's a BSA agent (or any filesystem mounted on a BSA agent, in the case of SMB/NFS file servers…)
- Some=mes -‐great-‐ for large website content (think 100,000 files, permissions, etc.).
- Contrast with audit-‐>deploy, which creates a BLPackage, may be much faster than audit/deploy for many objects, avoids fileserver footprint
! NSH Script: - Very flexible, doesn't bring payloads along, no parameteriza=on. Doesn't support repeaters
! "File”: - great for things that don't need code to deploy them (standalone binary executables, web content, etc.)