IT Staff Convention 2007:Desktop Change Management

Desktop Change Management

IT Staff Convention 2007, April 27, 2007

Moderator: Cynthia Kwan, Vet School

Notes: Bill Kasenchar and Kristin Nelson, ISC

Images and installs Automation – Remote administration – what products are used?

Wharton – uses wininstall – not tested in Vista
College Houses – Ghost for base image then a package installer to push out the applications – this keeps the time to get the base OS down quickly. Problem – dorms in different parts of campus – looking for solution to make this centrally managed regardless of the subnet.
SAS – classrooms in buildings across campus – coordinated with ISC to be able to use Ghost multicasting
Some other people are using big Fish (or Fix) to push out images
Some people have tried using Image X (the new tool that comes with Vista) but they have experienced problems when creating a multiple partition or multi boot image [“ISC takes the wait & see stance”]

IE7 – roll out, then roll back for those who needed it(most people are waiting pending BEN updates)

concern about vulnerabilities for Java leaving previous versions and web sites can look for older versions and … the vulnerability
Some setting up virtual servers for access to other product versions

Vista

Some are starting to push Vista – using for built-in encryption (bitLocker) for financial aid folks. Vista & Office 2007 are looked at as two separate products – anticipating an issue with 2007 due significant differences - Microsoft’s site has a sample of Office 2007 that people can go to

For labs / public areas – SAS classrooms continuing with XP this year – next year need to determine if there is a mixed environment (from one machine to another). Concern about moving classrooms to Vista – faculty with XP coming to classroom without knowledge of Vista – waiting for critical mass of faculty.

Vista – recommend creating new group policies rather than trying to use the existing XP group policies.

Lessons learned from previous rollouts

can equipment handle rollout of new OS / application. If not, determine breakdown of appropriate updating of separate groups

Most thought that it wasn’t worth upgrading existing hardware to Vista. When they are ready to deploy Vista it will be on new hardware

Training / documentation / announcements ----

Tutorials – Office 2007
- CHAS – ITA (student) training sessions to distribute information to other student workers and students.

Try to phase updates to not have too many changes for the end user at one time. The feeling is that office 2007 is a bigger leap than vista and the office tutorials are critical for a successful deployment. Vista was less critical because you can configure it to look like XP.

How to deal with different constituencies (e.g., faculty)

One person in room does faculty retreats / training – it is difficult to get the faculty to go, but with lunch and much cajoling, the instruction was a success. Deans encouraged participation

Mac?

Seems to be windows focused – anyone doing work with Macs--interest in how the dual booting might work – spurs some interest in use & virtualization
Test group with Parallels vs. Bootcamp – parallels was too slow & bootcamp seemed better
People are experimenting with Dual Boot for Macs
Vet is using Parallels
Patch Management concern – users without Windows knowledge need to understand there is a second OS that needs to be maintained. There is a difficulty with that with Linux and other dual-boot situations.

Other applications –

Eudora – With the demise of Eudora, what are people doing -- migration documentation will be created to help migration
Thunderbird 2.0 supposedly works with Vista and Kerberos
For people interested in transitioning to outlook the only way to import existing mail is to first import it to outlook express and then import it into Outlook

User Account Permissions

What level are users set at for Windows?

generally user – but there are other options
Interest in Vista to be able to explore the changes in privileges
Faculty have full admin to be able to use special applications; staff have user access
Laptops – provided a local admin account should they need to use it, but not used all the time
Other faculty provided a separate admin account to be used as needed. However, some apps require always using under admin.

Monitoring applications e.g., Trackit – anyone using it?

Trackit
Ezaudit – tally’s across domain # of users using a product or version of a product (fairly cheap)
Symantec Ghost suite