Patrick (and others), Snarkiness aside, could you elaborate more on the thought of "creating your installers so they are not ALL or nothing? "
The current direction - based on feedback from the majority of BMC customers - is that customers do desire a consolidated installer for a solution. The requests have been to reduce the number of installers (as we did in AR System 7.5.00) and to create a method to install an entire solution through one installer (as we did with the Pre-configured Suite Stack Installer in 7.6.x). The next evolution for the ITSM Suite is what the Cloud Service Management (CSM) solution has done where there is an Install Planner that combines multiple components as well as enabling remote installation across several machines. The Install Planner does allow you to install sub-portions of the solution on appropriate systems - e.g. Install just the Mid-Tier on one machine or install just AR System/CMDB on a different machine, etc. The areas that we do need to improve would therefore be more around: 1. Ensuring that the installation runs successfully. Our perception is that a customer would be willing to wait an additional 20% longer for an install to complete if they had a near 100% chance of success. In other words, it's better to have one successful install take 8 hours than it is to have to redo a 4 hour install 3 times. 2. Ensure that if there is a failure, that the system immediately identifies it as a fatal situation either to the product being installed or a product to be installed in the future. 3. In addition, if there is a failure, enable the install to continue from near to the point it failed rather than having to start over from scratch. Assuming that these are addressed - would you still desire to have individual installers for all the products in a solution? Or would addressing the above remove the need for your granular "baby-sitting" of the install and thus enable you to press the 'go' button and walk away. Is there anything else around the installer that would be critical on your list of needs to have full confidence in the installer - both for fresh installs and for upgrades? Note that this is an informal conversation, so while I appreciate the feedback, the process of submitting RFEs would still need to be followed if there are any specific enhancements that one would want to be formally tracked and responses provided. -David J. Easter Manager of Product Management, Remedy Platform BMC Software, Inc. The opinions, statements, and/or suggested courses of action expressed in this E-mail do not necessarily reflect those of BMC Software, Inc. My voluntary participation in this forum is not intended to convey a role as a spokesperson, liaison or public relations representative for BMC Software, Inc. From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of patrick zandi Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 07:25 AM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: ARS 7.6.04 -- Installers (in general) ** Now I know I am not the Remedy Engineer designing these applications or their installers, however ""I have a thought!"" BMC: Would you all consider creating your installers so they are not ALL or nothing? Maybe make the installer so that it asks what you want to install, then another box that says force (otherwise it checks to see if it is already successfully installed already). The only reason I say this is one simple reason.. if the installer takes up to 12 - 24 hours to run, and you do not have direct access to he server itself (its console).. then your like me.. I login to a windows box co-located and do a CygWin or Reflection X and call the display back.. but if you have ANY form of security, then the an idle console (terminal service) is a kick off after so long.. 1 hour usually.. This is a frustrating to run an install of ITSM 2-4 times to make sure it finished. When if it had the checks or stages of some kind, then you would not have as much work to do, and you can continue where you left off.. Just wondering.. -- Patrick Zandi _attend WWRUG11 www.wwrug.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug11 www.wwrug.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are"