All About Admin Images Best Practices for Admin Images from Setting up to Deployment

All About Admin Images Best Practices for Admin Images from Setting up to Deployment

All About Admin Images Summary What is an admin image What are the advantages of having one What are my options when creating one How do I set it up and customize it Troubleshooting permissions Best practices from creating through deploying an image

What is an Admin Image? The Installation Manager is the Keystone This is where all types of Installations happen, including Admin Images Admin Images are defined as: An administrative image allows configurable installations of SOLIDWORKS products from a single network location

What are the advantages of having an Admin Image? As an IT or Admin this method is very time efficient if there are more than 5 to 10 users It can provide an easy platform that can be modified to meet all users needs It creates a workflow that has every user on the same page, yet still gives users the ability to customize their SOLIDWORKS settings Ease of troubleshooting Easy to work with if you follow the correct steps

What are my options when creating one? First from your installation disc or download locate: These three executables/folders are ways to install any prereqs needed The Setup executable is most common and is what we will use

What are my options when creating one? Important in any installation upgrade process always do the following before installing: Disable any anti-virus software that may be running before installing Turn your User Account Control settings (UAC) to Never Notify Run the SETUP.EXE by Right Clicking and select Run as Administrator These three things will solve 80% of issues that come up in installations

What are my options when creating one? Now to answer the rest of the question: what options do I have in creating an admin image? The installation manager is your keystone (remember that) Once the Installation Manager dialog box comes up you will see a Welcome Page like this one:

There are two options to choose from for an admin image Create a new image using default settings You create a brand new shiny image that is fresh and clean and you can modify it accordingly (like the cherry red 1968 Corvette you always wanted) Create a new image using setting and files from an existing image (smaller download) Can browse to an existing image and base the new one off of that one, keeping your criteria the same as before (like trading in your minivan for a Porsche Cayenne)

How do I set it up and customize it? First setting it up: In the Welcome Page of the installation manager select the first option: Select Administrative Image Create a new image using default settings Click Next, then the serial number page will come up. If your serial numbers auto populate great but always double check them and see if more need to be added

How do I set it up and customize it? Select Next On the summary page make sure the Image is going to the location you want and make sure the check box is checked for the terms for SOLIDWORKS Then select Download and Create Image : It will then download the installation files and finish the install Then you will be on the Finish page of the installation Manager I would highly recommend before clicking the customize button to check the little box that says Show me how to install this image on a client, then browsing through the admin image area to learn more

How do I set it up and customize it? Notice when you click customize on the installation manager the Admin Image Option Editor pops up This is where we will do most of the rest of our work In case it doesn t pop up this is where it is located:

How do I set it up and customize it? In the Option Editor there are many things we can discuss We will break it down into three areas Setup Deploy Manually Deploy Automatically

How do I set it up and customize it?p First, I would identify all of your players who are going to need SolidWorks Then, break them into groups according to what they will need for software reqs Then I would put that information into the Admin Image Option Editor using the highlighted tool which is New Group : Select New Group and enter in the group name associated with the needs of that group Repeat that until completed

How do I set it up and customize it? Next let s assign those groups with actual people SOLIDWORKS 2016 has 3 ways of doing this Machine name IP address IP address range Click on the New Machine tool (just to the right of the New Group tool) The Add Machine Dialog comes up You can now enter in users by their IP address or by their IP address range If doing by machine there s a nice tool that can help you easily add machines with a couple of clicks: Add Multiple Machines button (see next slide)

How do I set it up and customize it? Clicking on the Add Multiple Machines Button will bring up this dialog: Just open the networks where you are looking and multi select all needed then click on the boxed arrow button Then you have all those machines added to that group

How do I set it up and customize it? If setting up by IP addresses or IP address range you will need to type out the IP address or range for each computer You can also leave comments on in this field

How do I set it up and customize it? Once I have all my groups and machines/ip address(s) added I can now input my global settings and adjust each setting for each group using SOLIDWORKS I need to use the Edit tool on the Global Setting first then close that edit and do that for each group thereafter

Deploy Manually Onto the next portion of the Admin Option Editor: Deploy Manually Deploying manually means you will be: Emailing a link to the network path that will access the HTA file and install the image

Deploy Automatically To Deploy Automatically you will be pushing the image install to the computers selected. This push will install either now or at a later date, whichever you choose The key is to make sure the admin s credentials are put in associated with the Domain that the image was created on

Permissions Troubleshooting Make sure all image users have full control of the Administrative Image main folder

Permissions Troubleshooting Elevated permissions will be needed when running these tests (Meaning IT or a Admin)., Download PSTools.zip from: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553, Extract the ZIP to a location that's easily accessible by multiple logins using the command prompt. (i.e. C:\temp). Download and save Process Explorer from http://live.sysinternals.com/procexp.exe to the same location where PSTools is extracted (see above)., Login to the client computer with client credentials. Launch Process Explorer with administrative privileges (right click on "procexp.exe" and choose Run as Administrator). (See second bullet for reference) If you cannot launch Process Explorer with administrative privileges do NOT proceed. Please contact Support@GoEngineer.com Open a command prompt with administrative privileges (Go to the Windows Start menu, go to Accessories, then right click on "cmd.exe" and choose Run as Administrator)., Change directories to the location where psexec.exe was extracted (from PSTools down load)., Press enter. This will attempt to interactively launch "startswinstall.exe" using the Windows LocalSystem account, similar to how the Push Install task is launched from Windows Task Scheduler., If you see: "access denied", then the share permissions to the administrative image need to be modified so that the LocalSystem account on the client machine can access it. If you see "Starting\\<client_computer_name>\<location of admin image>\startswinstall.exe", followed by "SolidWorks 20XX SPx will start installing automatically in 5 minutes or click OK to start it now", then the LocalSystem (domain\machine_name$) should have the proper permissions to launch the installation in the same way from Task Scheduler. To cancel the installation at this point, Close the "SolidWorks 20XX SPXX will start installing automatically in 5 minutes or click OK to start it now" window and locate "PSEXESVC.exe" service in Process Explorer. Right click on the process and choose "Kill Process Tree" to stop the installation. See Below: If the service ends properly, you should see "Error communicating with PsExec service on <computer name>: The pipe has ended" in the command prompt window. Otherwise, for all instances of "startswinstall.exe" and "sldim.exe" in Process Explorer and end those manually. To do so, in the Process Explorer window, right click on the process needing to be ended and select Kill Process.

Use the log file check box in the Admin Option Editor to troubleshoot

Best practices from creating through deploying an admin image Key factors that will make you or break you: When creating the admin image remember: UAC, Anti-virus and Run as Administrator When all is set up in your admin image, before deploying, run a script that disables anti-virus on the computers and turns the UAC to never notify. Make sure that all the users having the image deployed have full access to the main Administration Image folder! Use the tack scheduler to monitor the status of your deployment If you have a failed deployment whether on one or all machines remember that you can select in the Admin Image Option Editor to create a log file