on 07-03-2007 12:07 PM
The Altiris® Notification Server™ software is the core Altiris infrastructure server. By itself, the Altiris Notification Server does not provide any direct systems management functionality. It simply provides a base set of services that are leveraged by the Altiris solutions installed into it.
These services include:
To learn more about the Altiris Notification Server and the Altiris architecture, visit (http://www.altiris.com/support/documentation.aspx).
The Altiris architecture supports several options for executing DOS command language and VBScript on remote clients. Four of the most popular options include:
While any of these solutions could be used, the examples below are shown using Altiris Task Server and Altiris Software Delivery Solution.
Altiris Task Server is an infrastructure component that provides task sequencing and automation for Altiris solutions. It is built on the Altiris Notification Server infrastructure and allows administrators to create jobs that "wire" together tasks from many different Altiris solutions into one sequenced workflow. Task Server can also be used to execute any DOS command language, VBScript or Javascript making it an ideal platform to store command-line calls for integrating with third-party applications. Task Server jobs can be executed against an individual computer or against entire groups of computers called "collections."
Altiris Task Server will be used in the examples below any time a command-line call into a Lenovo TVT is required.
Altiris Software Delivery Solution is designed for the policy-based delivery of software packages to large collections of machines. The solution supports numerous functions such as bandwidth throttling, checkpoint recovery, multicasting, etc. that make it very easy to use and effective at delivering software packages across enterprise environments.
Altiris Software Delivery Solution will be used in any examples below that require the delivery of files to remote systems. These may include examples for remotely installing TVTs or simply pushing out configuration files to remote computers.
To effectively manage your enterprise, you need an accurate and thorough inventory of your desktops, servers, notebooks, handhelds, and network devices. Knowing what you have and where it's located empowers you to reduce IT support costs, protect your network, improve success of software deployments, and focus on higher-level objectives. The inventory gathered allows you to group computers by any specific criteria. Altiris refers to these groupings of computers as "collections."
Altiris tools commonly use policies to associate tasks and software packages with collections. Any managed device in the system can belong to one or more collections. There are two types of collections:
While all Altiris solutions publish data to Altiris Notification Server that can be used to associate a computer with a given collection, Altiris Inventory Solution® software gathers the most extensive listing of device properties. This makes Altiris Inventory Solution a valuable contributor to automated scenarios where policies are used to assign dynamic collections with management functions.
Altiris Overview
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