DEPLOYING HEAVY SOFTWARE ON AN AGING PARK WITH WAPT
EDUCATION – COLLEGE VICTOR HUGO DE NARBONNE
How to deploy heavy software on an aging infrastructure using WAPT?
We explain everything based on the case of Joël LATIEULE, IT manager at Collège Victor Hugo de Narbonne: infrastructure, challenges, needs, usage, and benefits with WAPT.
Presentation
Fundado en 1887 en Narbona (departamento 11), el Collège Victor Hugo cuenta con 750 estudiantes y 120 miembros del personal. La escuela tiene 22 aulas, 10 aulas de educación especializada y una Unidad Local de Inclusión Escolar. También hay clases dedicadas a la música y programas para estudiantes con alto potencial intelectual, además de un internado que puede albergar a 32 estudiantes.
Founded in 1887 in Narbonne (department 11), the college has 750 students and 120 staff members. The school has 22 classes, including 10 special education classes and a Local Unit for School Inclusion. There are also dedicated music classes and programs for intellectually gifted students, as well as a boarding facility that can accommodate 32 students.
The college operates on 3 separate physical networks and has 3 distinct domains that do not operate on VLANs. The only point of connection is a gateway managed by the regional education authority. The administrative domain consists of 15 workstations and can reach the other two domains. The educational domain comprises 160 workstations and can reach the DMZ. It hosts the Pronote server and can be accessed from outside.
175 administered stations
1 location
1 sysadmin
Problems encountered
- The school faced challenges in deploying heavy software such as LibreOffice. Deployment was done via GPO during computer startup, which became problematic on aging computers. However, the computers needed to be ready by 8 AM.
- Users (both students and teachers) grew impatient and restarted their computers during deployment, leading to installation errors that required intervention.
- The lack of real-time feedback was the biggest drawback of this solution. The system administrator had to regularly check that everything was functioning properly.
Testimony
If I don’t get any feedback from users, it’s because it’s working properly.
Why use WAPT?
For Collège Victor Hugo, the strength of WAPT lies in the community mobilized around the software, as well as in the many packages that already exist and can be used without spending time creating them.
What’s more, many organizations in the same sector or of equivalent size are already using WAPT. The fact that the company is French was also a plus for the college.
Version, support and training
As schools have very limited budgets, the college opted for the Community version, without support or training. The school depends on the Aude department. It is difficult to obtain additional funding.
Test phase
- 2 months of testing
- Testing in the teachers’ lounge
- 4 workstations with daily use by 80 users
Testimony
When I tried it out, I immediately saw the appeal.
What WAPT has brought to Collège Victor Hugo
It took a month to gather feedback from all teachers and accurately define each one’s software needs. This action facilitated the quick implementation of WAPT.
Collège Victor Hugo benefits from direct feedback in the console to manage its fleet. WAPT ensures that administrators can verify if a package is correctly installed, allowing them to be confident that revisits to workstations are unnecessary.
WAPT also perfectly meets the college’s desire to deploy executable files without recompiling them into MSI and without using PsTools.
Estimated Benefits with the Use of WAPT
According to the system administrator, for an equivalent action, WAPT saves 50% of the time. He even notes a very significant time saving when it comes to deploying a simple “.exe”. WAPT makes it easy to control and create scripts for each individual case.
WAPT eliminates the need to use OCS or GLPI for software, system and hardware inventory (via WMI feedback), and for remote control via RDP or Veyron. Consolet enables software to be quickly located on workstations, thus reducing the number of network requests.
So it’s fair to say that Joël LATIEULE and his team are now equipped to deploy heavy software on aging equipment thanks to WAPT.
Estimated gains using WAPT
Video Feedback
Some of our customers have agreed to talk about their experience in pictures.
Find them in the dedicated Youtube playlist: