It’s virtually LANDesk
Friday marked a major turning point in our LANDesk project. It is phase 1 of a three phase project to secure our LANDesk environment. Phase One was to move our LANDesk core off of a single physical box and place it on an ESX cluster as a virtual machine. In what has the be the single largest stresser of the last few months, it ended up taking about 10 minutes for the switch over. Seven of the 10 minutes was figuring out how to deactivate the old core, calling LANDesk, and activating the new core. Overall it was a great end to a very stressful week.
After the switch over we did about thirty minutes of testing and it looks like the VM core is actually going to be a great solution for us. We are just shy of 3000 nodes and expect towards the end of spring semester to be closer to 5000, and the VM did great over the weekend. As the work week gets ramped up we'll be keeping a close eye on the system and begin work on the next two phases. Phase 2 is getting service pack 2 for LDMS 9 installed. This is a major upgrade and hopefully a major step forward. Phase 3 is a more realtime backup/failsafe solution for the LDMS database. Over the next few weeks LANDesk should become one of our most stable and dependable systems.
This is also a somewhat sad project for me as it is the last major LANDesk project on my radar. Once all three phases of this are complete, the handing of the reigns to Sundiata should be as well. I am so ready to start another project but I really have put a lot of time and effort into this one. It is hard to get my mind off of it and onto the next thing. I am excited about the next project though and hope to have some more information in the next couple months.
LANDesk AV Week One
I've been writing documentation for the LANDesk project all day and really wasn't sure I would be able to write a new post. I really wanted to do a quick little recap of the first week using LANDesk AV. It is the first major task we have really done with LANDesk and I have to say, it has been awesome so far. No major issues removing the old AV or installing the new one. One of the minor problem comes from our old AV product not being recognized by LANDesk for auto-uninstallation. We wrote a simple in-house script that checks for the old AV and uninstalls it. It works for most of our systems, but we have had a couple problems with some older versions of the old product. Not a big problem as it doesn't affect the new AV and we are already working on a script to take care of it.
One of the coolest features of the LANDesk product is that we now see in the LANDesk console all files that are on the network that are viral or dangerous. We can also push scheduled scans out to machines as needed to make sure they are good to go. It is an awesome product and has already found about 60 possible dangers. I love how we can see the exact file and even make an exception without having to physically go out to each machine.
Anyway, I have gotta get home to pack up and clean the condo. Later.
Technology Overkill
Wow, after I started my blog back up I slowly started adding other social techs back into the fold as well. First I went back to Twitter and more recently I have jumped back on Facebook. I have to say that I don't know how folks do it. I feel so overwhelmed with it all. I don't want to lay my lack of posts on Facebook and Twitter, but they are really a time sink. I will continue to try and stay on top of everything but no promises.
Life has also gotten pretty busy for me. Next week is vacation and hopefully it will be just the break I need. No new news on the job front but I have to say it is consuming my mind at the moment. I would love to have some kind of answer before vacation, although I know that I am the only one on that timeline.
Once I get back from vacation I will be 100% into the biggest project I have been in charge of at the HUB. We will be using LANDesk to remove our current antivirus and install our new LANDesk AV. We have a very short overlap time and we have to test deploy and then mass deploy. Messing with AV is pretty scary because of how deep it gets into the OS. All I have to say is thank goodness it isn't norton.
The frustration ends in…
It is so amazing how one meeting can change the tone of a day at work. It wasn't bad, just a little frustrating at times. I think it was a combination of a pet peeve of mine and the fact that wireless in the UC was even less stable than flakey. I was proud to announce at this meeting that we are finally getting rid of F-Secure. It has been a good product, but I think we are now on track to have a great AV product. I worry that we may be putting too much faith in LANDesk, but so far it has been like Google and really delivered. Anyway, just wanted to distract myself from work for a sec.
Wrapping up with LANDesk AV
Well, after a few weeks of reading, setting up and installing LANDesk AV, I have to say I am quite impressed with it. It really seems to do a better job than our current solution, while being much easier to manage and install across campus. I have 18 test machines all running it and so far we haven't had any show stopping issues.
One of the most impressive features is it's ability to be managed centrally inside of LANDesk. At all times I get to up to date information on all quarantined files, virus, spyware, etc. This give me an overview of the campus health, alerts me to possible outbreaks, and puts me in a position to cut them off before they happen. An example of this cropped up today when a couple machines with the Pharos print system joined the test group. Apparently Pharos uses some Windows exploit to run and both our current product and the LANDesk product pick this up and quarantine it. With the current solution we would have to exclude this file on each machine from the check. With LANDesk, it was a simple change in the AV setting at the core and then syncing the clients with the core.
I have to submit my final opinion on the LANDesk product by noon on Thursday, but I have to say that right now it is looking very impressive. Add to that the script Admin Systems got us to automate the removal of our current AV product, and we may be on our way to switching this July. Hopefully I can have some concrete answers by next week.
LANDesk AV test core
Finally got the LANDesk test core setup. We are trying to demo the LANDesk AV product and I can't wait to start testing. We meet today at 3 to talk about how we want to test, what machines we want to test, and refine our time table and goals to decide what makes the testing a success or failure. I already know we have a couple major hurdles to overcome.
Hurdle 1, we currently use F-Secure antivirus and it is not recognized by Windows or LANDesk. This creates a problem of uninstalling it easily and consistently before putting the LANDesk AV on CSU laptops. We have a few options here, but they all require some concessions on our part. For instance we could write a script to check for F-Secure, but no one currently knows windows scripting and the time involved with learning it could be outside our time table.
LANDesk AV Configuration
Another option is to only have agents with the AV product installed on machines we have physically touched. This could be a major staffing and time nightmare for our walkup locations, the opposite effect of what LANDesk was purchased for.
Hurdle number 2 is a kinda related, but how do we get LD AV to recognize F-Secure. I am not too sure it will even if we select the option for the LD AV to install but lay dorment until existing AV products are uninstalled. I know it doesn't detect it and uninstall F-Secure, but will it even know that it exists at all?
These are just the big things I am looking for, but look forward to hearing from the other full time staff regarding what they think will make a success and what will make a failure.
Getting ready for students
One of the major factors in purchasing LANDesk at CSU was to enable more freedom for our students. Currently a student who needs to install Microsoft Office will need to come in to one of the HUB's two walkup locations. This has been the common practice since we started ITP Choice in 2001. With LANDesk we hope to move out of this and enable students to install software on demand anywhere on campus.
A huge hurdle in this task is a disconnect between our student information system and LANDesk. Before an install begins we have to be sure that the person installing it is a currently enrolled, eligible student. We looked at several solutions for this including LANDesk Process Manager, but ultimately decided we could more efficiently do it with a simple authentication application.
Wednesday is here!
The best burger and fries in town
I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am for it to already be Wednesday. Tonight two awesome things get to happen. First and formost I get to see Kim again. We had a great weekend this past weekend despite us both feeling a bit under the weather, but haven't really gotten a chance to hang out this week after lunch meeting for lunch Monday. The second big thing, and far less awesome, is going to Five Guys. This place has quickly become my guilty pleasure. I know hamburgers and fries are not the least bit healthy, but nobody in fast food does them as good as Five Guys in my opinion.
These two things are powering me through a day of work that so far has been a pretty aggravating. I really need to get back to focusing on our LANDesk AV test core. Hopefully it'll be rolling this afternoon.
Not a snow day
Well, after more broken promises from the weather people, I am at work this morning and not a single flake of snow to be seen. This is really a good thing because I have a lot of stuff to do with LANDesk and I do need to be at work. I was kinda hoping for the day off though because I really feel terrible. I have had a congested head for two days and this morning I woke up with a killer headache and a sore throat. I took my temp and it is normal so I am not too worried. I just really want to be home and sleeping.