Migrating from GPO Software Installation to SCCM

[duberry_wotsit]

Hi,

 

We have hundreds of applications currently rolled out via GPO objects. I am going to begin the task of migrating all of these to SCCM, with the end goal of having little or no software deployed by GPO software installation options.

 

I've been trying to find some best practice on this, the thing I need to understand is how to time it so that software is removed by the existing GPO before being applied by SCCM but with minimum disruption to users. I don't know if it is smart enough to realise that the application is already installed and not try to install it again when it is already present thanks to GPO or conversely if I deploy again with SCCM then remove the GPO object will that cause an uninstall?

 

Thanks for any advice

[Lucid]

I'd just leave the software installed and remove your GPO; letting SCCM take over management of the machine. After you get the SCCM client installed on a machine, once it reports the Hardware Inventory information back to the central server, SCCM is smart enough to know what's installed. After that, it's up to you to structure your collections and advertisements correctly.

 

Before doing anything I'd deploy the SCCM client to all my machines so I could begin gathering information - before I messed with my GPOs.

 

After that, say you're pushing Adobe Reader, I'd set the GPO not to do anything once the GPO is deleted. Then I'd wait a bit and then kill the GPO. After that, I'd make an SCCM collection that contains all my healthy and active machines (we base ours off the last date of the Hardware Scan - you can pick whatever works best for your environment). Then I'd create a second collection for Adobe Reader, limiting it to my "healthy" collection.

 

select * from SMS_R_System where SMS_R_System.ResourceID not in (select SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS.ResourceID from SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS where SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS.DisplayName = "Adobe Reader 10.0.1" and SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS.Version = "10.0.1")

 

Using a dynamic colleciton like this means that if the machine has an older (or newer) version of the listed app, my advertisement will try to install - I set my adverts to always reinstall and allow my collection query to do the work - this way if someone removes a piece of software it'll get put back on.

 

Keep in mind that you might have to tweak your queries if you've got both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows machines...