The Basics of Bulk Installs
Bulk installing software can seem intimidating at first, but it's an essential sysadmin skill that can save you tons of time when you need to deploy to multiple machines. Understanding the basics puts you well on the path to efficiently managing software across your organization's devices.
When doing bulk installs, you typically use tools that can push packages to remote endpoints without needing manual intervention. This removes the burden of visiting each system individually to initiate installation. Bulk deployment solutions like Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, PDQ Deploy, Chef, Puppet, Ansible, and more give you these capabilities.
With bulk install tools, you prepare the application package on your end point management server. This includes wrapping up all the installation files, configurations, executables, scripts, and other components needed for a smooth deployment. You also define any custom actions, reboots, prerequisites, and post-install steps.
Once the package is ready, you use your management software to target the desired systems and initiate deployment. The installation process then executes silently in the background on the remote devices without user interaction. This is perfect for large rollouts.
Bulk installs are also useful for software testing. You can rapidly push your application to a broad fleet of test machines to verify functionality before full production deployment. This is much faster than manual installs when you need to cover many systems and scenarios.