When Does One Need DUA?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeffery Bahr
  • Start date Start date
J

Jeffery Bahr

We're deploying XPE devices in remote locations, running
an proprietary infrastructure application with which we
can upload files from our proprietary client. We are
running Remote Desktop, so we can execute commands, run
regedit, and/or perform most useful operations remotely.
We are concerned, of course, about being able to apply
QFE's in the future. I apologize for what might seem like
a dumb question, but I can't figure out what DUA provides
in terms of syntax/semantics that I can't do now
manually. Am I missing something? Is DUA generally for
remoted XPE systems that aren't running RD and/or don't
have file upload capability?
 
From the description of your runtime, an admin needs to remote into each
machine, modify the registry and force the machine to receive new/updated
binaries then (if necessary) force a reboot.

DUA takes care of this automatically. When you create the configuration in
TD you specify a polling interval that the client checks in with your server
on a regular basis at specified times of the day. If you had place QFEs on
the server since the client last checked, the client runs a Device Update
Script off the server (created by you) that installs any new binaries and
updates the registry and reboots (if necessary) all automatically.

If you only have a few machines to update maybe this isn't a big deal, if
you have hundreds or thousands of machines to update you can obviously see
where DUA will save you a lot of money, time and effort.

You can read more here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...n-us/xpehelp/html/xecondeviceupdateagent3.asp

--
Andy

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.
=====================================================
 
Thanks, Andy. Actually, I had considered the "write-once-
deploy-lots-of-times" issue, but forgot to mention it.

We do expect to have between dozens and hundreds of
installations, but:

1. The embedded application is responsible for managing a
lot of high-dollar infrastructure.

2. Security considerations are pretty high on the list.

3. Because of (2), we prefer to minimize the XPE
complexity, close all unused TCP/IP ports, disable RPCs,
and such.

For these reasons (and a few others), it makes us a little
nervous to have the XPE system polling via DUA. Still,
with HTTPS, maybe we'll get over the trepidation :)

Thanks for the quick and well-expressed response.

J
 
Back
Top