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Desktop Management with LANDesk

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PCQ Bureau
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LANDesk Management suite is an agent based desktop management software. It

can centrally manage all nodes in a network by automatically distributing all

tasks to each system's local core server. It has features like Inventory

Management, Remote Control and Problem Resolution of client nodes, Software

distribution, and software license monitoring. LANDesk needs agents to be

installed on the clients before it can manage them. These agents support Linux,

all Windows versions and Mac OS. These agents can be either pushed into an

unmanaged machine or can be



manually installed. It also lets you create customized agents, ie if you don't
want remote control facility on a node, you can just uncheck that



option while creating an agent. It can also perform network device discovery and
monitor unmanaged devices for their connectivity. LANDesk also



generates alerts for the administrators to tell them the state of various events
through e-mail, SNMP trap, message box, etc. This suite can create reports just

about everything it does. It comes with default templates for inventory reports,

remote control reports,


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Software licensing monitoring reports, unmanaged device reports, etc. You can

also customize the reports. Installing LANDesk is simple.



During installation, it asks to provide a database. It supports Microsoft SQL
Server, Oracle and Microsoft MSDE database. Once it has been installed, you need

to activate its core server before using it. After activation, you can start its

console and begin using it.

Inventory management



LANDesk's inventory scanner scans the managed devices for hardware and
software installed on the device and stores them into LANDesk core server's

database. It can scan for hardware components present in remote device like BIOS

information, ports, processor information, etc. Similarly for software

inventory, it can detect all installed software and provide information about

their attributes like when a software was installed, its version, path, vendor

information, etc. Once the inventory scanning is done, you can see all details

on its console. 

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In the inventory management feature, you can manually add a node. For this,

you need to provide machine's IP address, IP name, etc. But you cannot add

anything that is not on network, like the stuff lying in your store or currently

kept out of network for some reason. 

LANDesk has another useful feature called 'delta scanning', which can be

used to scan the devices for inventory changes. Once the full scan has been

done, this feature scans the devices to automatically return only the changes to

the core server database. Since it only sends the changed data back to the

server, it consumes less network bandwidth and lessens the time taken in doing

inventory scan. All these changes can later be viewed in reports or by going to

inventory history. You can also export all inventory change details in a CSV

file. Another interesting feature present in the inventory management module is

custom data forms. Using these forms, the information such as user's phone

number or nodes asset tags that can't be scanned by the LANDesk's inventory

scanner, can be entered into the database. These forms can be easily created as

per the information required and can be sent to the user so that they can fill

them, either at the startup or when the inventory scan is running on the remote

node. Once user submits the form, information provided by him is stored in the

database.

You can not only remotely control and troubleshoot problems in the systems connected through LANDesk, but also train users remotely
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Software distribution



To distribute software, first you need to create a package. In this suite, you
can create MSI, SWD, EXE, batch file, Linux and Mac packages. Now you can deploy

these packages on the clients using LANDesk's software delivery methods. Its

PUSH delivery method pushes the packages from the core server into the managed

devices. It also has a policy method in which LANDesk makes package available

for download and when the client agents check for the available updates, the

package is sent to the managed device. Every distribution method has further

categories like emergency distribution of the package, bandwidth aware

distribution, install at next login distribution, etc. These options can come in

handy when you get into a situation where you have to immediately patch all

nodes of your network or if you have a large distribution, which can use a lot

of bandwidth of the network. You can also schedule the distribution of software

to managed nodes in your network. When using its SWD package option, you can

also repair an already installed package or you can even perform a full

reinstall of the program. Similarly, you can also



update or install additional components for a package that is already running on
your nodes.

LANDesk software licensing feature provides you the ability to track overall

license compliance, monitor product usage and deny use of particular



softwares. Its software license feature has huge list of known software, which
it can monitor. But in our tests it was able to detect and monitor software's

which were previously unknown by the software.

LANDesk can automatically detect the devices which you specify to be

monitored, and every time inventory scan runs it updates its usage data and

sends it to the core server. If a device is disconnected from the network, the

LANDesk agents running on that device record the usage data and send this data

to the core server whenever they are connected to the network. It also lets you

deny use of a product specified by you. When a user tries to execute a denied

product, they will get a message box informing them that administrator has

prevented their access to this software. Similarly, it also lets you deny

individual file execution based on file names. It also denies use of these

products if the device is not on network.

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Remote control



LANDesk's remote control lets you remotely access nodes in your network that
are running LANDesk agents. LANDesk remote control agents provide the option if

the remote node should be asked to give you permission before you start managing

the remote node, or you can directly access that node. In our tests we found

bandwidth used was negligible when managing a node remotely.

Its remote control also lets you chat, bidirectional file transfer with the

remote device. It also lets you optimize the performance of remote control

according to your connection speed like if you are on modem connection, you can

select slow connection from 'Optimize Performance'. When you change these

optimizing settings, it automatically adjusts number of updates send, colors,

window appearances etc. It also has an option of suppressing the remote

wallpaper which when selected, sets Remote Control to not send the wallpaper

updates. This, in turn, reduces the bandwidth usage of the network. LANDesk's

Remote Control option also has a drawing option through which you can create

drawing on remote nodes desktop. This option can come in handy when training a

remote user about something. LANDesk also has something called LANDesk

management gateway, which if implemented with LANDesk management suite, lets you

securely remote control nodes outside an enterprise network over the Internet.

The ease of use and ability to automate the desktop management makes LANDesk

a good product for small and medium businesses.

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