To help those companies that are facing tight deadlines with the migration off of Windows XP before end-of-life in April 2014, Adaptiva has bolstered their product line with new enhancements. I had the opportunity to review these new options first-hand last week, just prior to my heading out to Austin, Texas for weeklong visit to SpiceWorld.
I spoke with Deepak Kumar, the founder and CTO at Adaptiva. During out talk, Deepak demoed the new options that will allow organizations to take advantage of their Configuration Manager 2012 infrastructure and provide better options to manage quicker and more bandwidth conscious deployments for new operating systems.
The three main components are:
Virtual State Migration Point – A Virtual SMP stores all settings, preferences, and applications in a single file that can be moved across the WAN and stored, in pieces, on computers with unallocated disk space. Once the file has been distributed, and disseminated across available computers, it can be utilized to upgrade computers.
Content Pre-staging – Adaptiva's OneSite with Rapid OSD can distribute OS images across the company's network, allowing the images to be available prior to kicking off an OS upgrade. But, what Adaptiva does differently than just copying the large files across the network, is it intelligent enough to work within the confines of bandwidth restrictions. Adaptiva utilizes "predictive bandwidth" technology to ensure the file is distributed but that the company's network sees no significant impact. End-users can continue to work normally.
Peer-to-peer PXE – One of the more robust and intelligent features of the Adaptiva solution is that it can utilize available disk space on computers at the remote location to store OS images in pieces and deploy the OS upgrades from there. This eliminates the need to install a separate server on the remote network to just to store the large image files. Today's computers contain hard disks with an enormous amount of storage, so Adaptiva makes use of the additional space to distribute and a store the files.
Just a few clicks to enable and configure the new options and "operation dump Windows XP" can officially start. Even for companies already in the midst of a new OS rollout, these features can help to enhance and shorten the deployment cycle.
Press Release
Adaptiva Helps Enterprises Streamline Operating System Migration from XP with OneSite Rapid OSD
Virtual SMP, Content Pre-staging, and Peer-to-peer PXE Help Lower the Cost and Time of Switching to Windows 7/8
SEATTLE, WA – October 29th, 2013 - Adaptiva, the award-winning provider of IT efficiency solutions, today announced the unveiling of a new set of capabilities to aid in Operating System deployment (OSD) for businesses with distributed world-wide networks. The Adaptiva OneSite solution allows companies to conduct OSD rapidly, at a fraction of the cost, without servers, and with no network configuration changes—while never slowing down business network traffic.
According to Netmarketshare’s June report, over 37% of the PC OS market is currently operating on Windows XP. This exposes a large number of companies to serious security threats and software compatibility issues after Microsoft ends Windows XP support on April 8th, 2014. A complete global enterprise OS migration of tens or hundreds of thousands of systems can take years.
Traditional migration processes require server infrastructure at every site, frequent at-desk visits, excessive WAN bandwidth, and hotly-contested network equipment configuration changes. OneSite’s Rapid OSD requires no servers at remote sites and typically no at-desk visits. OneSite lets the systems management team own OSD start to finish, without using business-critical WAN bandwidth and without needing the network team for anything (no IP Helper configuration, no DHCP scope options, no permissions).
Adaptiva OneSite with Rapid OSD facilitates OS migration in several ways, including:
- Content Pre-Staging: OneSite pre-stages OS image files, often 20GB or more, at all sites on a company’s network. Files travel only once over the WAN using Adaptiva’s predictive bandwidth harvesting to ensure no impact to business traffic. On LANs, multiple systems download each file simultaneously. If an OS image file is updated, OneSite automatically creates an efficient, small “diff” file to transfer and apply, boosting performance and saving bandwidth.
- Peer-to-Peer PXE: While traditional PXE serves OS image files from a single server, Peer-to-peer PXE intelligently selects the best available peer system to serve an image. When migrating several systems at once, it will use TFTP to serve each image from a different peer for the fastest possible OS installs.
- Virtual State Migration Point (SMP): During OSD, each user expects the new OS to retain all their existing settings, preferences, applications, and MB or GB of data. Virtual SMP saves and restores it using zero footprint caching, which aggregates unallocated disk space on computers at remote sites without taking space from end users.
“Operating System migration involves an extreme amount of data and requires a way to manage the distribution and deployment of about 20-25+ gigabytes of data required for most companies,” said Deepak Kumar, CTO and founder of Adaptiva. “Because OneSite is tightly integrated with Microsoft SCCM, it provides an elegant solution that automatically creates a Virtual SAN and Virtual SMP at every network location, making OS migration a much easier task. Our technologies drastically cut deployment times down to as quick as a single day—once the image and task sequence have been created—all without the need for consulting services.”
For a deeper look at OneSite technology, visit http://www.adaptiva.com/onesite.html.
About Adaptiva
Founded in 2004, Adaptiva is a leader in IT systems management software, extending the functionality of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager for enterprises across the globe. Adaptiva’s software suite and underlying platform optimizes existing IT assets for content delivery, PC power management and client health. Adaptiva’s software transforms traditional server based systems management infrastructures into lean peer-to-peer networks that are resilient, highly scalable, and optimize content distribution – delivering significantly lower costs and higher return on investment of existing systems. A Microsoft Gold Partner, Adaptiva is deployed on more than 2 million devices in over 14 countries, and is sold directly and through a network of partners and channel resellers. Learn more at http://www.adaptiva.com/, email info (at) adaptiva (dot) com or call 425.823.4500. Follow Adaptiva on Facebook and Twitter.
