On 07/10/2014 10:02, Charles Last wrote:
> 1 - How are other institutions getting Matlab and other very large
> applications to their Labs? Is it being deployed or is it part of a
> Labs Image.
We have three ways of getting an application onto a PC in a student centre:
A. Include in base image.
B. Install as part of post-imaging process.
C. Allow the user to initiate installation discretionarily.
If it's something that is needed in all centres, we'll generally use A.
We have put Matlab in the base image in the past, but have moved away
from that in the last year or so, as it complicates the image building
process, and there are some centres where it isn't needed. Having a
single base image for all student PCs makes things a lot easier to build
and test.
So, anything that's needed in some but not all centres is handled by our
post-imaging process. This knows what centre the machine is in, and what
apps are needed for that centre. We use a hidden partition to cache
installation materials (and the base image), so re-imaging a PC is
generally fairly quick and involves little network traffic once the
cache is populated (for normal reimaging we only wipe and recreate the
windows partition).
Anything that does hardware-specific stuff at install time will also go
in B.
License allowing, apps will also be available via C. The problem with
this for the larger software is that the user has to wait while the
installation takes place, so it's less than ideal, but does at least
give them the option. (If that option is being used a lot in a
particular centre, we'll notice this in the stats and pre-install the
app in that centre.)
> 2 - Do they have any guidelines and policies with regards to large
> app's.
Nothing specific, although we generally require people to specify the
features they want installed, rather than installing everything,
especially for the large stuff.
> 3 - Does anyone know if the latest version of Matlab (2014) is
> compatible with sysprep.
Not sure about the latest version, but we have in the past included
earlier versions of matlab in the base image, and not had any specific
problems with it. It's mostly just files to copy rather than anything
that would be affected by sysprep in my experience.
Mike
--
Mike Sandells
The University of Liverpool - Computing Services Department
Work: [log in to unmask] http://www.liv.ac.uk/csd 0151 794 4437/7789
Home: [log in to unmask] http://www.mikejs.com
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