Deploying to smaller deployment groups

[bbot]

I've been deploying software updates by smart groups, which normally include 200-300 users at a time. Our networking team is saying that we're using too much of our network bandwidth, so I need to find a way to deploy to a smaller group of people at a time.

As an example, I created a smart group for "Microsoft Office 2011 is NOT on the latest version".
The smart group returns with 300 machines. I'd like to deploy to 50 of these machines at a time. Is this possible?

[thoule]

That really sucks. What a pain. You'd have to find a way to subset that group. Perhaps computer name starts with A-J, and so on. Or IP address range and break it up. So create three copies of your Office not latest smart group, each with additional criteria.

Could you perhaps set the policy to kick off at 10pm so it caches at night? Then install later?

[bbot]

I figured there was no easy way of doing it... Sounds like I'll have to make multiple smart groups with computer name.

All of these are laptops and our users are required to take their machines home.

Thanks!

[mm2270 · Accepted solution]

We once had to do that and used JSS ID ranges, like JSS Computer ID is greater than 0 and less than 51 (to capture at most 50 Macs), and another group from JSS ID 51 through 100 and so on. Its a pain, no doubt. It would be a welcome feature if the JSS had a way to slowly increase machines into a Smart Group instead of all machines that fall into the criteria at once, or some other throttling controls for policies. For what its worth, policies are already kind of throttled by way of the random delay that occurs, so even if 100 Macs all decide to check in at the exact same time, they are all going to end up running the policy at slightly different times because one may run it after only a few seconds delay and another may wait for several minutes before finally executing the policy.

You could also look at setting your check in time higher, like bump it to 30 minutes with a 15 minute max random delay. That should spread things out a little more and help satisfy your network team.

[bbot]

Thanks. I'm using the JSS ID range to break down the smart groups. @mm2270

[Look]

Just thinking about this one a little bit.
How about this for a crazy idea...

Create an EA that initially starts at a random number from 1 to 100, every time the EA updates (i.e about once a day in our environment) it increments by one looping back to 1 when it reaches 100.
It would need to be stored lcoally somewhere so the clients knew their current value.

You could then use this as a value to compare against for smart groups, machines would move in and out of it over time as the EA cycled around... Something like Load_Balance_EA > 80

It would save you creating different smart groups or even changing the current one as eventually all machines should get the packages.

You might need some kind of catch all at the end for machines that hadn't recieved it, although you could just remove the condition from the original smart group at some point to get the remaining machines.

[Look]

Hmm just thinking about this a smaller maximum number might be better something like 5, that would spread the load over the next five inventory updates. otherwise it might take 80 inventory cycles to reach the last machine.