Adobe Creative Cloud Application

[smithk]

Just wondering if anyone has tried to take an Adobe Creative Cloud Package or DMG and have it actually deploy consistently? I have been working with support on this for over 2 months now and cannot seem to find any better consistency then about 10% working. The fact that it does work as a package file on its own 100% of the time and that it does deploy and work 10% of the time makes me think it is not the package file. All other applications work fine. All use a local distribution share that is on a NAS. I have tried thru Http and forced over SMB. The package size is right around 20gb. I am being told there is not a limit to file size. Just curious to know if anyone else is having same issue or success with Adobe?

[kowsar_ahmed]

Been deploying CC2017 globally to over 800 machines (both the Full Suite and Design suite). Our master collection is a little over 10GB, why is your one 20? Seems very excessive. Anyhow .pKG straight onto Casper admin and deployed after cache works fine however we found it was very inconsistent. We have reverted to using the installpkgfromscript.sh script. It will cache it to the machine and then instantly start installing. We deploy via HTTP and initially done a 'silent' install via recurring check-in so it works side by side on CC2015. Then had about 100 machines that kept failing and realised they needed to be serialised again with the latest serial number prior to installation, this reduced the number to 50 machines that kept failing. So we changed the trigger to install on logout for these and have now completed a worldwide rollout.

[bpavlov]

When you deploy it, make sure no other Adobe apps are opened otherwise you may run into problems getting it to install. Also, best practice is to install Adobe applications individually. That is use the Adobe Creative Cloud Packager to package each title by itself. This gives you future flexibility in updating and pushing out the apps. It's a bit more work up front but is much better practice in the long run.

[ChickenDenders]

We use the Adobe Creative Cloud Packager tool to create deployment packages. I don't trust the Adobe Enterprise web portal thing. You can drop the .pkg file directly into Casper Admin. I haven't had to even cache the policies and then install later, just a normal straight install works fine for me.

I've had better luck breaking out packages individually, like @bpavlov suggested. If one of the modules is corrupt or something in a "mega bundle" package, the whole thing will fail and it isn't easy to see what it is that broke it.

[jwojda]

There's log files you can use to determine what went wrong. Most of the time for us it's a lack of space on the client.

[smithk]

May have to look into packaging individually like was mentioned. I know Jamf Support mentioned that as well, problem is that our licensing is thru a consortium of schools so not really easy to setup but after hearing a couple more people mention that, may be what I need to do. Right now we have it setup that the whole package downloads to the destination and then runs the install and deletes from the computer when finished. Fairly new to the Jamf world so trying to learning all the terminology so our method sounds like what Kowsar.Ahmed mentioned. The install when it does work takes about 1 hr and 10 min to install. Unfortunately you have to wait that long to find out if it fails usually as well. I am still skeptical of our NAS Distribution as well but working with what our networking dept. was willing to set up for us.

[ChickenDenders]

Our Adobe installations also take a very long time, usually around 40 minutes to an hour.

[strider_knh]

We also have a large installer, about 12 GB, and it installs just fine. This is only for our wired lab stations that install it automatically. All of our 1:1 laptops we have the Adobe applications in Self Server individually. This way they save HDD space and download times.

We also use Adobe Creative Cloud Packager, take a few minutes to setup and takes some time to package everything but it is work it. Just remember, that packages that the application produces are not flat packages, they should be compressed into zips before added them to the JSS.

[Look]

Same as @ChickenDenders we just use the pkg directly out of the packaging tool these days, also takes a similar amount of time.
The one thing I will say is don't have any Adobe stuff already installed when you try! It will often cause it to fail and if one single thing fails it backs right out of the whole install. Because of this we do all our lab Adobe installs during the actual machine deployment process.
If we are redeploying I blitz all the Adobe products in Applications and Utiities then run the Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner over the machine (why this doesn't actually uninstall the products as well is beyond me) and that generally allows a newer version to reinstall.