Re: Small Project Definition

It sounds like the goal is making sure that all your (hundreds?) of PCs have up to date virus definitions.

This feels like longer than an 8 hour project and it feels like you won't accomplish your goal, if user's don't update with email notification, they aren't going to update with a popup box....

You might be better off using the your vendor's shrink wrapped central console . or switching to a vender like Norton that allows PCs to be configured to reach out and pull down anti-virus definitions directly from Norton's website.

If you are talking about hospitals and people’s lives (?!!), money shouldn't be an object. If you recently got nailed, your upper management should be open to spending some money to fix this problem. If not leak the story to your local newspaper

In a small setup, 5-10 PCS a home brewed script can work pretty well. –I’ve done it. In a larger setup configuration management by hand can get ugly. (I’ve seen it done)

Hope this helps

--mandog

Comment on Re: Small Project Definition

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Re: Re: Small Project Definition by jlongino (Parson) on Sep 30, 2001 at 07:54 UTC
Close, but I think more accurate is that the goal is to show that our department has bent over backwards to make the process as easy for the enduser as we possibly can without having to invest any additional funds (my time isn't equated directly to funds, it's already budgeted). I'll have our antivirus person check into the CSS option. Although from what I can tell from their white pages (which isn't much), I'm betting that it would be more cost effective to go with NAV mass licensing so we don't incur the added costs/headaches that go along with installing/maintaining multiple servers necessary to handle the administrative tasks ourselves. As for the hospitals, nearly all of the critical administrative functions are done via dummy terminals to an IBM mainframe. But the "less essential" computing functions will still fall in Academic Computing's realm. Also, this is a University which is currently under proration and is being throttled by the foundation established to nurture it. As for upper management, I really really like my job and want to keep it. My boss is great and will always try to do the right thing. Unfortunately, the final decisions are not always his alone and I'll probably end up doing this project anyway for political reasons. "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." -- Henry Kissinger	[reply]

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Re: Re: Small Project Definition
by jlongino (Parson) on Sep 30, 2001 at 07:54 UTC

Close, but I think more accurate is that the goal is to show that our department has bent over backwards to make the process as easy for the enduser as we possibly can without having to invest any additional funds (my time isn't equated directly to funds, it's already budgeted).

I'll have our antivirus person check into the CSS option. Although from what I can tell from their white pages (which isn't much), I'm betting that it would be more cost effective to go with NAV mass licensing so we don't incur the added costs/headaches that go along with installing/maintaining multiple servers necessary to handle the administrative tasks ourselves.

As for the hospitals, nearly all of the critical administrative functions are done via dummy terminals to an IBM mainframe. But the "less essential" computing functions will still fall in Academic Computing's realm. Also, this is a University which is currently under proration and is being throttled by the foundation established to nurture it.

As for upper management, I really really like my job and want to keep it. My boss is great and will always try to do the right thing. Unfortunately, the final decisions are not always his alone and I'll probably end up doing this project anyway for political reasons.

"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." -- Henry Kissinger

[reply]