Everything at your Fingertips: Working with FileWave™

Getting Started

As a system administrator using FileWave Admin, you establish a FileWave Client on every known computer in your network by means of a FileWaveLet, which installs, configures and launches the agent on each machine. The Admin interface presents you with three main windows and a server status display.

A View of Your Clients

The first window contains a list of all the computers, or Clients, on which FileWave Client has been installed, with the Clients assembled into Groups on the basis of location or purpose (or both), depending on your requirements. You can fully customize each Client, whether your software distribution is being done on a 100 Mbit network or via Airport. Defining and modifying this universe of Clients and Groups is easily managed, with Clients able to be shuffled among Groups and Client names able to be readily imported from the FileWave Server, directory services or simple text files.

Creating FileSets

Using the second window of the Admin interface, you create a FileSet, which consists of collections of like files and which often represents all the files that make up a complete software installation. For example, a FileSet named “OfficeX” will contain all the files that make up an installation of Microsoft Office for OS X.

 

Creating Associations

To install these files/folders you first drag them into the FileSet window (Admin will automatically import all the files and folders into the Server), then drag this newly created FileSet into a Group or a single Client. An Association is thereby created and listed in the third Admin window, promptly triggering the download of the FileSet. A handy feature allows you to set time attributes on the Association should you wish to precisely specify when a FileSet is to be downloaded, activated or deleted.

Sophisticated Magic

For more complicated installs, when files are scattered on a hard disk, FileSets are created using FileSetMagic, a powerful proprietary tool designed for either Mac OS X or Windows. FileSetMagic scans the hard disk (in the case of the Windows version the Registry as well) and then requests the installation. You launch the software; configure, license and test it; then run FileSetMagic again. A second scan takes another snapshot of the hard disk and compares it to the first, noting any changes. Admin receives the delta, displays the results, excludes files and creates the FileSet.

 

Serving up the New Model

Once made permanent by means of the Update Model command, this new FileWave model is uploaded to the Server, at which point (or later if the installation has been scheduled for another time) the specified Clients across the network download the new software. At any point in the process, even well after the installation is completed, FileSets can be modified: new files or whole folders can be added or renamed, and files and folders deleted. The Clients do not download the entire FileSet again, just the changes that have been made to it.

Monitoring the situation

As administrator you can monitor what a single Client is doing during the distribution/ installation process by opening the Client Status display and/or having a look at the log file, or what all of the Clients in your network are doing by going to the Clients Report.