Best Practice to Prepare SmartShield for Image Deployment

Introduction

SmartShield is often deployed in a massive environment such as at school campuses and across chains of business where creating a system image is the easiest way to push out a generic set up for a computer. SmartShield is compatible with these kinds of solutions just like most programs. To put SmartShield onto an image, there are a few best practice guidelines included below.

These guidelines will work with any Windows OS and several different imaging softwares. Please test your image before letting it loose in a production environment, as these are included as general guidelines and every network is different.

Preparing Your Image

SmartShield needs to be installed as a SmartControl connected client and should never be pushed out as an image with a stand-alone license key. Even if you are going to license these machines with a stand-alone key, please install with option one during install and un-click the ‘Verify with SmartControl’ box. This will ensure that none of your license keys are suspended after your image is deployed.

During installation please be sure to use a custom installation. Any time you are prompted, please use the minimum amount of space for product installation. If you do not, your image will increase by the full size of the storage file. For example, if SmartShield deems that 200GB is a recommended file size for your Temporary Storage File, your image would also increase by 200GB.

Once SmartShield is installed, be sure it is Unprotected. You will not need to Protect the system as part of your image creation. If an image is pushed out with Protection enabled you may run into big problems due to suspensions and Protection being stuck on. If Protection does get stuck on, please refer to the below section called “Stuck Protected”.

Lastly, please perform a Sysprep on your image. This will clear off any information from the NIC as well as computer name. If SmartShield connects to a SmartControl with the same MAC address, it will need to be set up with MAC filtering.

Stuck Protected

If your machine is stuck in a protected state you will not be able to access your licensing tab to reactivate or register your license. Even from the SmartControl you may fail to change protection states. Centurion Technologies has included a command line interface for your SmartShield to allow you to disable protection in case of emergency situations like this. To do this, open the command prompt and type the following bolded commands. Where the code says <password>, please type your password without the <>’s.

cd “C:\Program Files\Centurion Technologies\Client”

ctsrcmd disable -p <password>

If the command completed properly, you should receive a confirmation of “Ok”. Restart the computer and you should be able to perform the license update as normal. For more information on getting your client license back to normal, see the “SmartShield Licensing Explained” document.