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Symantec
Norton HelpDesk Assistant
Reviewed by: Howard
Carson, send
e-mail
Published
by: Symantec, go to the web site
Requires: (Administrator)
Windows NT4 (SP3 or higher), P166 or higher,
64MB RAM, 120MB hard disk space, MS Management Console 1.1,
IE4.01 or
higher, Remote Procedure Call enabled; (Clients) Windows 3.1/DOS
(386/286 CPU, 8MB RAM, 20MB hard disk space), Windows 95/98
(486/66MHz
CPU or higher, 16MB RAM, 175MB hard disk space), Windows NT4
Workstation (486/66MHz CPU or higher, 24MB RAM, 175MB hard
disk space)
MSRP: US$115/per
seat for 100 seats
The technical
support from software and hardware manufacturers that most
of us understand is a matter for conjecture, demand, argument,
endless waiting on the telephone, days of waiting for an e-mail
response, off-the-shelf responses (most of the time), dissatisfaction
(often because of our own technical ineptness), and sometimes
outright anger and a tirade directed at someone who's just
doing a very difficult job. Occasionally we get the answers
we need very quickly, exchanging pleasantries with the helpful
person at the other end of a telephone call or an e-mail response.
There's another kind of technical support though - the
kind that often makes the difference between a company project
being finished on time, or being disastrously late. The largest
corporate networks resemble nothing so much as large clusters
of users gathered in one concentrated mass, all pounding
away at similar sets of software and operating systems, usually
making use of a fabulous hodge-podge of hardware and creative
influences.
It's a fascinating circumstance, but it can also make a
person cry - especially when something goes wrong. Picture
yourself as a momentarily important cog in some giant corporate
machine. You've got to meet a deadline (finish a PowerPoint
presentation, finish a creative brief with fancy graphics,
complete a technical spec, layout an overview of an ad campaign,
update some giant spreadsheet, write some code, etc.), and
at the worst possible moment something crashes on you, or
your system locks up, and all you get out of a reboot is
the sinking feeling that your computer is *really* unstable,
the files you were working on are lost for all time, and
the inexorably creeping chill of realization which goes hand
in hand with abject panic.
What do you do?
In traditional corporate environments you can call an Information
Services or Information Technologies (IS/IT) person and beg
for help. You promise the person an entire week of free lunches
if they will only drop what they're doing at that moment
and fix your computer. You promise to give them a huge Christmas
present. You promise to pay their children's college tuition;
anything to get help. In some companies you may even find
an Operator; someone assigned specifically to remedy difficult
problems. This person is often not motivated by the same
panic as that which grips you at some importune moment. Most
Operators (sitting in an office often called the Help Desk)
invariably display a different set of priorities from the
ones which are driving you at any particular moment.
Life as only a single cell of a giant corporate hydra can
really suck sometimes.
So what do you do? There's always suicide of course, but
the latest trends in corporate culture seem to eschew the
use of ceremonial swords at lunch time. The problems remain,
the problems are legion, and the solutions are usually beyond
the means of most of us.
There are other problems too, looking at things from a
different perspective. As a hard-working IS/IT manager, what
the heck do you do when its time to roll out Office 2000
across an entire local 1000 seat network and all of the remote
laptops (or across a 50, 60, 100, or 500 seat network for
that matter)? Few IS/IT or Operations departments these days
have the budgets to afford a dozen or more staff who can
be deployed to install upgrades. Concurrently, very executive,
management, accounting, marketing, and other employees across
any enterprise can be trusted to devote the time necessary
to properly install upgrades or new applications at their
own workstations themselves. So how the heck does the IS/IT
department unsure that upgrades are fully and properly installed
on every single computer in the network? Do short-staffed
IS/IT departments have to visit every single workstation
to ensure that upgrades are fully and properly installed
in a timely manner? Up until recently, that was certainly
the case.
Symantec has recognized all of the foregoing deep-rooted
problems and has ridden to the rescue with something called
Norton HelpDesk Assistant. It's a rather simple, straightforward
and effective approach to a vast, pervasive 'network' of
productivity software and operating system problems.
Symantec Norton HelpDesk Assistant allows support staffs
to not only take over remote or directly networked desktops,
but to quickly diagnose and fix PC problems. In typical medium
to large network environments (500-5,000 PCs), an employee
reporting trouble with some piece of software or howling
about some perceived OS aggravation will be greeted with
what's commonly known as a Trouble Ticket (TT); essentially
a service order which is issued describing the problem. The
TT is placed into a priority system which eventually spits
it out again in the direction of some IS person or Operator
who will (if they're not waylaid by some other person with
an even more urgent problem) haul off to the offending workstation.
HelpDesk helps to eliminate the long waits associated with
overworked IS staff and Operators, by providing remote access
to networked and remote workstations and a deeply comprehensive
set of software analysis and repair tools.
Setting up this type of Help Desk environment might seem
like a complex task to undertake, but Symantec has taken
a 'let's not rediscover the wheel' type of approach. Using
a client/server type of design to take advantage of traditional
networking, various control computers (servers) on an NT
network are set up with the Norton System Center part of
the HelpDesk suite. System Center can be used to remotely
access networked PCs, and to install and configure software
on PCs throughout the network. The control and workstation
PCs are set up with pcAnywhere 32, which allows help desk
staff to remotely access all the PCs on the network. pcAnywhere
32 helps eliminate a large number of desktop/office visits
to solve problems. Each PC in the network is also equipped
with Norton Utilities, Symantec's well-known product designed
solely for optimization and trouble shooting of independent
or networked PCs. The fourth software application in the
HelpDesk suite is something called Norton Ghost. It's a highly
useful little utility which allows you to clone a hard drive
setup (OS, installed software, etc., etc.), then literally
re-image a whole series of hard drives thereby creating identical
setups on each one. For network administrators, identical
base systems created with Ghost are a genuine blessing because
the analysis 'playing field' is leveled. The software set
up and configuration becomes a standardized (and therefore
more clearly understood) factor.
The Symantec Norton HelpDesk Assistant CD also contains
Norton CrashGuard and Norton AntiVirus as part of the general
Norton Utilities installation. Both of these utilities are
industry standards, and Norton AntiVirus in particular is
widely regarded as the best application in its class.
Although the Proton Research network is small (60 PC workstations
driving a dozen servers) we decided to do a full installation
of HelpDesk. We already use Norton Utilities and Ghost to
reduce problems, so the Symantec approach to things was not
unfamiliar. Full remote access to network PCs was a new experience
however, and pcAnywhere 32 certainly lived up to its billing
as an industry-leading remote access tool. Installation of
pcAnywhere 32 is essentially a two-step process: the Client
must be installed on individual workstations and the Host
application must be installed on the main control server
being used to access and service the individual workstations.
In an effort to stress HelpDesk we set up a series of problems
simultaneously throughout the network:
1 - E-mail virus EXE attachments on workstations without
anti-virus protection.
2 - Word file attachments containing known macro virii
on workstations without anti-virus protection.
3 - Beta software installations with known priority one
bugs (crashes).
4 - Heavily fragmented hard drives on 10 workstations.
5 - Software installed and run without a system re-start.
6 - Miscellaneous natural problems which occur on a daily
basis in a 60 seat network, including the failure of staff
to backup documents stored on local hard drives, and instabilities
introduced by installations of unauthorized software (games,
utilities, etc.)
Problem
1 & 2
- Remotely installing Norton AntiVirus on individual workstations
throughout the network proved
to be extremely easy. An internal phone call to IS/IT and
a description of the problems allowed IS/IT staff to target
Outlook 98 and Exchange Server with ease. In the course of
remedying problem 2, we actually discovered a research assistant
who was still using Office 95 (when the person should have
upgraded to Office 97 more than a year ago). A remote upgrade
was done, and IS/IT subsequently checked all systems on the
network to ensure compliance with enterprise-wide software
standards. A variety of non-compliant systems were discovered
and upgraded (and in one case an entire workstation system
was replaced).
Problem 3 - Norton System Utilities were triggered remotely
to help analyze problems with low-level applications (Explorer,
System Tray, and so on, as well as known-flaky beta software),
which in some cases resulted in instructions to restart or
cold boot a workstation. Determinations were easily made
about the reason for the crashes. IS/IT remotely identified
problem software and only after that identification was made
did the workstation user reveal a confirmation (we kept all
problems confidential so that IS/IT ended up being restricted
to HelpDesk). IS/IT almost immediately created an 'All Staff'
e-mail forbidding the installation of unauthorized beta software.
Problem 4 - Once again, Norton Utilities were used to diagnose
the cause of very slow operation. We actually did not set
this up deliberately; there really were at least 10 workstations
with one or two heavily fragmented hard drives each. In all
situations IS/IT ran SpeedDisk to defrag the hard drives
after each person was done with their workstation for the
day. One workstation hard drive was so badly fragmented that
it had to be re-Ghosted (it only took 1 hour to backup the
document directory, re-format the hard drive and Ghost a
standard setup back onto it. Going through the (in this case
extremely lengthy) defragging process might have taken all
night. In such situations it's typical for a hard drive to
trigger a thermal shut down from the endless thrashing, making
it likely that the defragmentation process might never finish.
Ghosting a prepared setup onto the drive is a fast, easy
solution for workstations which rarely have anything more
than a standard setup installed for regular use. Some workstations
will have users who require lots of ancillary software, so
re-Ghosting such machines can mean lots of downtime while
the user re-installs all the extra stuff. In those cases,
IS has to decide whether or not the potential for an unsuccessful
defrag (and the time needed to repeat the process) outweighs
the amount of time needed to re-Ghost the system and install
the extras again.
Problem 5 - Plenty of employees in a variety of enterprises
have not been properly trained in the art of software installation.
If you're using Windows, you've got to restart your computer
after installing just about anything. Fail to do so and you
risk creating an unstable working environment. Too few companies
train their staff on anything computer-related (and even
computer companies often hire people who are less computer
literate than they should be). HelpDesk was used to remedy
a bunch of small problems which resulted from a lack of computer
literacy including such things as documents and data files
strewn all over the main hard drive rather than organized
properly in a subdivided documents directory.
Problem 6 - It was a pleasure to be able to remotely access
individual workstations and set up automatic backups of document
directories. Far too many people fail to organize regular
backups, and in a busy research office that is an unacceptable
state of affairs. pcAnywhere 32 allowed the same IS/IT people
who had previously sweated through various Undelete-type
file rescue missions, to avoid much of the need for such
efforts by simply setting up automatic nightly backup routines
on various workstations. The problem of unauthorized software
installed on company workstations was remedied by simple
deletions and a subsequent registry clean up. The hue and
cry over invasions of privacy died down after it was pointed
out that the 'wounded' individuals didn't actually own the
PCs or the network. Some may argue, but the fact remains
that most companies pay their staff to work on company projects
rather than spending time playing games, surfing for pornography,
and other non-business related pursuits.
Cons: True remote control over Windows on workstations
is not quite here yet. pcAnywhere 32 should evolve into something
perfect in the not too distant future however. pcAnywhere
32 can be used to poke around in workstations and will invariably
reveal things that just shouldn't be there. There are a few
moral, legal, and ethical problems which arise in such situations
and IS/IT managers, CEOs, Operations managers, HR managers
and others need to create strict rules and regulations governing
how deeply the company can poke into staff workstations.
If Operations has the responsibility for overseeing IS/IT
in most corporate environments, then the Operations manager
or director has an obligation to keep a very close eye indeed
on how effectively and legally tools like pcAnywhere 32 are
being used. IS/IT managers and administrators who have some
greater independent authority will do well to inform themselves
about just how far they can pry into ostensibly private areas
of networked PCs.
Pros: pcAnywhere 32, despite some reservations, is a powerful
tool; it's AutoXfer feature can be used to automatically
transfer and synchronize files across a variety of systems
to ensure access to the most current versions (a very important
need in a research office). In addition, deploying pre-configured
software updates across the network was an IS/IT dream come
true. The days when various workstations on a network were
running disparate (and sometimes incompatible) versions of
some enterprise-standard software should be long gone. For
busy IS/IT, Operations, and general network and Help Desk-type
support departments, Symantec Norton HelpDesk Assistant is
an excellent, robust, package which can quickly and easily
be deployed across an enterprise. The result will be less
downtime, more efficient, reliable, and productive staff,
and faster solutions to previously time-consuming problems.
Symantec Norton HelpDesk Assistant is highly recommended
for administrators of small, medium, and large networks.
Letters
to the Editor are welcome and occasionally abused in public.
Send e-mail to: whine@kickstartnews.com
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