Application Packaging Solutions: McAfee's Installation Designer

Benefits of using Installation Designer
Installation Designer is a well-thought-out, easy-to-use application for customizing the installation of VirusScan. The two biggest reasons for using Installation Designer rather that doing things manually are worth mentioning:

Consistency: The ability to customize virtually any setting of VirusScan ensures that you have a consistent installation across your enterprise—one that is not left to the whims of any particular system administrator or end user.

Speed: By answering all the prompts once, you can then deploy VirusScan via e-mail, login script, or an alternative deployment tool such as SMS or ZENworks. Not having to respond to half a dozen questions during each installation will save a significant amount of time and effort.

How Installation Designer works
Installation Designer is actually rather basic. It’s a GUI that reads the VirusScan installation source and creates a set of distribution files based on the configuration criteria you choose. The application is well laid out, with the menu items that you must step through identified on the left-hand pane, and the corresponding question(s) for each menu item clearly displayed in the center of the window.

Welcome
When launching Installation Designer , you’re given the option of either creating a new package or modifying an existing one. This is a rather obvious selection, but it does demonstrate that you don’t have to sit down and think through all of the installation options at once. In addition, if there’s a significant change to your corporate security policies, you can revisit your installation package to make the appropriate changes. Strangely, if you select modify versus create, your options for customization of an existing package are slightly limited. If create is chosen, you will have to walk through 20 menu items in order to fully customize the installation package. Modify only has 12 options. Unfortunately, some of the items you may wish to change are only available during the creation process. For this article, I’ll focus on the effort to create a new package.

Source and Destination Specify source and destination folders for where the raw version of VirusScan is and where the custom package will reside.

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator® 4.5 is the only enterprise-class, open platform to centrally manage security for systems, networks, data, and compliance solutions. With end-to-end visibility and powerful automations that slash incident response times, ePolicy Orchestrator dramatically strengthens protection and drives down the cost of managing security.

Here ePO 4.x is higher version and 3.6.1 is lower version so select as per your need.

Features: A hierarchical list of features to enable/disable or show/hide. Similar to the Custom Installation Wizard for MS Office packaging.

Source for Configuration You can either import the settings from your local PC or specify an existing CAB file. The selection of an existing CAB file implies that a previous installation package exists.

Installation Options Here you decide to what folder VirusScan will be installed, if the installation will be silent, and whether to preserve existing VirusScan or NetShield configurations.

On-Access Scanner How the real-time scanner will behave and what actions will be taken if a virus is encountered.

On-Delivery Scanner How VirusScan will interact with e-mail files. If using a MAPI/IMAP messaging system, such as Exchange select the “Scanning of e-mail” option.

Schedule Scans Here you decide how frequently VirusScan will scan and which drive it will scan. Highlight a task and select Edit to ensure that the scan schedule frequency and start time is appropriate for your organization. The Advanced tab offers useful settings for maximum CPU utilization throttle.

AutoUpdate Schedule Shows how frequently VirusScan will look for updated signature files. McAfee Updates are typically released on Wednesday. I recommend setting the AutoUpdates to check weekly on a Friday morning. This will allow time for internal IT staff to ‘certify’ updates two days prior to general deployment.

Installation Option Select it as per your requirements here we checked “Use default installation folder” and “select Install product silently”.

Alter Manager Installation Explains which components will trigger alerts, what type of alerts will be generated, and who will be notified.

Add/Remove Options Allow clients to Uninstall or select the Modify option from the Control Panel. Optionally, you can even hide VirusScan from Add/Remove Programs

DAT and Engine Files Optionally bundle updated signature or engine files. Stick with the original DAT and engine file. Incorporating the latest updates can be very time consuming

Patch Files Use to determine what optional service packs or hotfixes to include. If SPx is out, I recommend bundling it with the VirusScan installation.

AutoUpdate Configuration Important options for specifying AutoUpdate repository locations as well as source location priorities for update files. Having multiple repositories can be beneficial to ensure that workstations always remain current

Programs Optional additional programs that can run after a successful installation.

Additional Files Optional files that can be added to local PC following an installation. These can be completely unrelated to VirusScan.

Registry Settings Optional .REG file that can be included for customizing the Windows Registry. Can specify separate files for NT, 2000, or XP. A minor, but useful setting that’s not configurable via the Installation Designer is the elimination of the Splash Screen during VirusScan startup. The following REG file setting may be useful:[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Network Associates\TVD\VirusScan Enterprise\CurrentVersion]"bSkipSplash"=dword:00000001

Installation Designer Password Password protects the installation package. Recommended to prevent other system administrators from tampering with your work of art.