Pizza and Altiris

July 5, 2007Dan 1 Comment »

Well, hello again. I am happy to report that Track A of the summer semester is over, and thusly my classes linear algebra and diffy q. I only have 1 class for Track B, which is Engineering Statistics. So far the class has been pretty easy and I think I’ll be able to stay on top of it. We just got off of the short but very nice July 4th break. I spent most of the day sleeping in, out on the portage boating and tubing and in general hanging out with good friends. It was very nice.

At the office today we pooled together and bought pizzas. We end up ordering from Domino’s just about every week; they are just down the street and their pizzas are pretty tasty/prices are good. We ended up getting:

1 Large Philly cheese steak pizza – This pizza has got to be my favorite that Domino’s offers. We call it ‘The Fungus Pizza’ at work because it is decked out in mushrooms and peppers. It also has onions, steak and (I think swiss) cheese. Despite mushrooms being the only real fungus on it, the name sticks. Man I love this pizza.

1 Medium Supreme deep dish pizza – Man, all I can say is this pizza was disappointing. Normally I really like supreme pizzas, but in the words of Nick, ‘Something just tastes wrong about it.’ I don’t know what it was. I don’t like the Domino’s sausage very much; I’m sure that didn’t help. We won’t be ordering this one again, I would suggest a ham and pineapple as a good complement to the exceptional philly cheese steak.

Altiris is a new remote management suite we’ve been deploying at Aux over the last couple of weeks. The software is pretty neat, it includes full remote control of client machines, including PXE boot and WOL. Most of the appeal of the software is that it allows for extremely easy imaging of computers. We can also add software to a remote machine by dragging the software package onto the PC’s name in the console. We have to specially make (most) software packages by taking a snapshot of a base machine before and after installing the software on one of our testbed machines, but it is pretty straightforward. Everything Altiris can do can be scripted and scheduled, making it pretty powerful.

One response to this entry

  • Jeremy Says:

    You’re only using one tool (Altiris Deployment Solution) of many available Altiris tools. The real wow factor is in the client management suite. You shoul install the Notification Server (free component), Task Server (Free Component), Network Discovery (Free Component), Dell Client Manager (Free Component), HP Client Manager (Free Component), and the Deployment Solution for NS (Free Component, integrates Deployment into the web console that all other Altiris products use).

    http://ww.altiris.com/eval – Select Dell Client Manager, Download it, Install it, and start from there. It will install the Notification Server and the free Dell Client Manager. From there you can go to View -> Configuration in the console it opens (http://ServerName/Altiris/Console), Upgrade / Install New Solutions, and then select any of the free or for purchase components you want to play with.

    Altiris Resources:

    http://juice.altiris.com – Awesom wiki site with articles, downloads, etc.
    http://kb.altiris.com – Knowledgebase
    http://forums.altiris.com – Altiris Forums
    http://www.altirigos.com – User Run Forums

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