Automatically installing BMC Defender Agent for Windows

Manual installation of BMC Defender Agent for Windows can be done quickly within an enterprise and provides a highly controlled rollout of the agent software. Typically, a manual installation of the software requires only a few minutes per target platform including the time to log into the target platform, acquire the software from the BMC Defender home page, and run the installation procedure.

Even though manual installation is fast and easy, some enterprises might find it desirable to perform an automated deployment of BMC Defender Agent for Windows across hundreds (or even thousands) of the different system. This section provides procedures and methods to assist with automatically deploying BMC Defender Agent for Windows to multiple Windows platforms. BMC Defender Agent for Windows can be installed using a silent and unintended installation procedure, using standard using deployment software such as Microsoft SMS.

The BMC Defender Agent for Windows includes the wt-silent.exe program in the s-doc of the BMC Defender distribution, that permits the system to install via a command-line option in a fashion identical to the standard agent installer. The details of this program are in this section.

Automating the deployment of any software system incorporates certain risks. Before executing an automated deployment, the automatic installation procedure should be carefully tested on a variety of different platforms to ensure proper operation. While Windows WTS does not pose any special hazards beyond that of normal software installations, experience shows that specific common problems (such as firewall and networking issues) considered as part of the software installation process.

Additional notes of automatic deployment

• The wt-silent.exe program performs a silent installation of the Windows agent and gets used in remote software deployment.
• The CSetup.exe program can be used to perform a command-line installation of the Windows agent and provides extra capabilities, such as in the creation of self-extracting WinZip files and MSI files. In addition to using an MSI file, a self-extracting WinZip program, or other installation software can execute the CSetup.exe program, possibly within a CMD prompt or batch file.
• Caution might be necessary to ensure that the CO-sysmsg.exe program is not already executing when the installation takes place because the CO-sysmsg.exe program cannot be overwritten by new installation software if it is in use by the operating system. (The wt-silent.exe program attempts to uninstall any existing version of the program before installing the new one.)
• The installation program uninstalls the WTS from the service manager, and then re-install itself, thereby permitting you to change the location of Windows Tool Set software to another pathname. That greatly simplifies the relocation of WTS software, if needed.

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