Introducing the GroupWise MSI installation

As mentioned before, an installation of a solution like GroupWise can become quite complex. In the past, all of this was handled by a simple InstallShield script. Although this worked pretty well, due to the added complexity of a modern Windows desktop, Novell has decided to start using the industry-standard MSI format for the installation process of the client. The use of MSI has many advantages; for example, you can easily change an existing MSI installation by creating an MST file, which is a kind of "add-on" that includes your own preferences. Describing MSI in full detail is outside the scope of this book, but here is a summary of the most important benefits:

• MSI is more tightly integrated with the Windows operating system, which offers many advantages. One example: An MSI install will never overwrite a newer DLL with an older version, meaning no more "DLL Purgatory" because of a newly installed product.

• Products installed using MSI are "self-healing," meaning that if any part gets somehow damaged, there are options to (automatically) repair the damage.

• MSI includes rollback options. Instead of having to uninstall a new version that doesn't work as expected, you can quite often simply roll back to an older version.

• No admin privileges are required by the (installing) user. An MSI install routine will automatically be granted enough privileges to be installed.

• MSI offers lights-out options. You can distribute the new install package first, and later deploy the software locally at a given time.

• MSI is table or database oriented, making it possible to use several tools like AdminStudio from InstallShield to "tune" your MSI or MST files.

• MSI offers more options to integrate with ZENworks. MSI and MST files can be directly connected to a ZENworks installation object, and the combination of these two strong techniques will offer huge benefits.

You can learn more about MSI-based installations combined with ZENworks in certain specialized training sessions, such as the course "MSI, Novell ZENworks & InstallShield AdminStudio: Basics" from Roel van Bueren at http://www.rovabunetworks.nl. In the rest of this chapter we describe the basic usage of this changed MSI installation routine.

Note

During the first betas of GroupWise 7, we've noticed that there is a GroupWise MSI Tuner, which allows you to modify the parameters of an MSI installation. At the moment of writing, it's uncertain whether this utility will be included in the final release; during the beta period it was located in the ADMIN\UTILITY\GWTUNER folder.