3. Plan your Deployment
Before you create a Deployment Tool application, consider how you will be best to organize the deployment of your Visual LANSA Application.
It is important to understand that deployment is more complex than "just picking up everything and moving it over there".A successful deployment requires understanding, planning and thorough testing.
Start by considering the following questions:
- Where is the application going to be installed?
- Client? Server? Standalone?
- Windows? Linux?
- How is the application to be installed and subsequent upgrades applied?
- MSI or MSP file?
- Per-user or per-machine?
- Just in Time upgrade?
- SCCM integration?
- Into a development environment?
- Do you need to distribute different parts of the application to different machines?
- How does the application connect to the database?
- Are there any templates suitable to use as the basis for you Application?
If you can answer all of these questions, then you are ready to start deploying your application.
If you could not answer all of the questions above, you need to develop a clearer understanding of what you are attempting to deploy before you proceed!
Establish the minimum supported configuration
You need to formally define the minimum configuration your solution will viably need, including:
- Minimum hardware requirements
- Minimum software requirements
- Minimum networking capabilities
- Maximum data volumes.
A formal minimum supported configuration will:
- Allow you to make informed decisions about the overall solution cost
- Establish the environment required to test the deployment of the solution or any patch/hotfix made to it.
- Raise management's awareness of the risk in implementing a sub-minimum supported configuration solution.
Repercussions of Per-Machine vs. Per-User Installations
Windows Installer can install or upgrade a software product for all users of a computer (per-machine c ontext) or for a particular user (per-user context) based on the access privileges of the installing user. If the initial Version is installed per-machine then all subsequent Versions and Patches must be installed per-machine.
If you plan to deliver your software product updates using Just-In-Time upgrade, then the users who is running the application MUST have the rights to install those updates. So if they do not have the rights to install per-machine and the software is installed per-machine then when the update is attempted it will fail.
Also see
3.1 Deployment Tool Environment
3.2 Lifecycle of an Application