Autonomic Software

Policy Driven Government or Corporate Compliance

ANSA Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

I ve got quite a mix of computers on my network, and I am not sure of the OS versions, application, etc. How will ANSA be deployed?

Our engineers will provide you with a questionnaire prior to installation of the ANSA suite of products. Once these determinations are made, it is easy to deploy the application throughout your network.
When deploying custom packages, can I send out software packages as well as patches?

Yes. For ANSA, anything that can be made executable (exe, bat, jobstreams, etc) can be deployed as a custom patch. This means software packages (new installs) as well as one-time password changes can be deployed to any set of clients on the network. It�s simply a matter of creating the executable or stream of commands, defining it to ANSA, and deploying it via the scheduling process.
We want to be able to test patches in a small subset of our network. How does ANSA allow this?

ANSA will allow you to define a separate Inoculation Server, which actively deploys patches to your small subset of clients. Additionally, you could set up a separate test group (by using grouping functionality within the user interface) which will allow you to create a subset to which you can direct specific actions (patch deployment, asset scanning, etc). In this way, you can control how and when patches are deployed based on your organizations� needs.
I discovered a patch, which when it was installed, caused a problem with one of our homegrown applications. What can I do?

Since the vast majority of Microsoft patches, in addition to patch installation, provide for removal of that same patch, ANSA will allow the uninstall package to be deployed across your network. For other operating systems, assuming an uninstall mechanism is available, ANSA can be utilized to deploy the uninstall package.
While a patch was being installed, one of my users shut down the desktop, halting installation of the patch. What will happen?

The ANSA client, next time the machine is connected to the network, will attempt to install the patch until it is successful in doing so. If the patch, based on progress, has failed, it will be inserted in the failed queue where it can be redeployed from through the common scheduling mechanism.
We would like to have critical patches tested before we get them. Does ANSA provide for this?

Yes. The Professional Services branch of ANSA can replicate your environment and test patches prior to releasing them to your organization. We will mirror your environment to the extent you feel necessary, as well as testing any patches to that same extent before releasing them to your system administrators.
I m concerned about the timely deployment of patches within our organization. How does ANSA address this concern?

ANSA guarantees that any patches made available from Microsoft are available to its users within 12 hours of that release, assuming no custom testing is necessary. For other vendors, ANSA will turn around all available public patches within that same time period (12 hours). As a hosted solution, ANSA retains permanent staff to constantly oversee and maintain the Global Update Repository, which is the source from which patches are ultimately deployed to all ANSA users. Once the patches are made available to ANSA users, it is the responsibility of the system administrators to deploy them via the ANSA framework provided.
How large is the ANSA agent that will reside on each of my client computers?

The footprint of the ANSA client agent is extremely small, less than 575 KB (in dormant mode). When asked to, the agent will expand and contract, depending on functionality invoked. Example: when scanning the agent machine, the agent itself may expand to up to 12 megabytes; when done, it will contract back down to dormant mode size (this entire process will take less than 1 minute in most cases).
Occasionally, a user will update software or otherwise change the environment on their desktop or laptop machine. As a result of this, if a patch is negated on that machine, will ANSA recognize this condition?

Yes, the next time the agent logs onto the network, the ANSA server will know that the agent has become out of sync with the server. The agent will scan itself (based on policy) and the ANSA console will show that the patch has become available for the agent machine.

ANSA FAQ PDF