Full Altiris Client vs RDP

[Mark Kotsmith]

Is there a good comparision between the two products somewhere with what is in the full Altiris suite vs what HP provides in RDP? I know there are some differences and RDP is kinda a stripped down version of the full Altiris suite.

Thanks

[Jonas Back_2]

According to an Altiris technician I talked to there's no other difference than the HP logo in the title bar of the console.

One difference however is that HP deliver the "Altiris Deployment Solution" together with their ProLiant Integration Module but that's nothing else than a bunch of files/scripts (smartstart-CD etc) and Events for deploying scripted installations. However, this can be installed on the normal Altiris Deployment Server anyway (I guess you have to buy Altiris from HP because of licensing) and it works.

So what we've done was when we was installing again we installed Altiris Deployment Solution 6.1 rather than RDP 1.50. And after 2 days of testing it seems to be working fine (we use it for all our servers (100) and clients (400).)

This because we will also run some other Altiris products on the same server so we thought it would be easier to get support from Altiris since we get hotfixes/updates easier and don't have to wait for HP to update RDP.

If anyone else has some comments, I'll be happy to discuss pro's and con's since we've spent quite much time thinking it over.

[Kevin Vierstra]

There is a whole lot more to it than that. RDP is free and the client licenses for the servers is a one time charge and good for three years. If you compare the Cost of the Altiris maintenance to the 0 maintenance cost of RDP I think you will find RDP to be tremendously less expensive.

[Jonas Back_2]

Yes that's correct - it's cheaper. That's why we bought RDP licenses instead of Altiris licenses :).

[Jennifer Taylor_4]

ok so Altiris and RDP are the same thing. Can I deploy desktop clients with RDP licenses and using the RDP console? I had a heck of a time getting XP to work with 1.60 a few months ago. Had to modify the 2k install scripts. My company is looking at the Altiris deployment solution but if this is the same thing then we could just get more RDP licenses right?

[Jonas Back_2]

When it comes to licensing it doesn't really care if you use RDP or Altiris licvenses. The only difference I've seen are "Server" and "Clients". But to be honest, I can't say if you install a Win 2003 server and only have "Client" licenses if it will allow you to manage that.

We use Altiris Deployment Solution and have "Altiris" client licenses for our Win XP clients and RDP licenses for our servers and it works.

[Jennifer Taylor_4]

Do you know if it will work that same way using RDP instead of the Altaris software?

[Anupam Anshu_1]

Hi Mark,

The differences are as follows:

1. RDP is built around the Altiris suites. So in a sense you get all Altiris functionalities with RDP.

2. RDP comes with pre-defined (sample)jobs. These jobs can be modified, depending on the need to suite a particular environment. You can refer User Guide provided with RDP. The sample jobs (to name a few):

- To erase the system completely (make it factory default),
- Hard disk detection and configuration s/w,
- Installation jobs for different Operation Systems (different versions of Windows and Linux as of now),
- SmartStart Suites, which gets installed on the target systems depending upon the Hardware and OS installed on the system,
- Also, system health monitors get installed on the target system
- Imaging of the target servers
- Image deployement of the target servers
- etc....etc

There may be many more differences/advantages what RDP will carry over Altiris. The above differences are from top of my mind.

Regards,

Anupam Anshu

[Jennifer Taylor_4]

Ok here's what I'm hoping to do. I want to be able to use RDP to push OS's to desktops. I know Altaris is made for it but has RDP been altered too much for it to work. Also does anyone know if the Altaris desktop licenses will work within RDP? (If I need to post this question under another post or start a new one please let me know)
Thank You.

[Jonas Back_2]

I don't think so. In the beginning we used RDP installation with both RDP licenses (for our server) and Altiris licenses (for our somewhat 500 desktops).

But then we needed to re-install the whole thing on new hardware and new OS so we then decided to go with Altiris installation and that's what we're running today with about 115 RDP licenses and 500 Altisi licenses.

The reason why we decided to go with Altiris installation instead of RDP was just to be sure to get proper support (both incidents to their helpdesk and security fixes and updates) from Altiris rather than HP. We also run Notification Server on the same server so that was another reason why to stick to "all-Altiris"