LSCLIENT removal

[sullivane]

Just found out that the lsclient is no longer support or works.

VERY disappointed in this, as ALL of our Windows devices are scanned using this. Currently, none of our Windows machines are now updating to Lansweeper until I figure out what we are going to do.

We do not use active timed scans because our machines are not always on and on at odd times (we are a school).

I had lsclient setup to scan after every login. This was VERY beneficial to us as we can tell what machine every student was using and when. This data is used ALL THE TIME.

lspush does not trigger the after scan deployment which we use ALL THE TIME to keep software like Flash and Java up to date. This is huge for us.

With the removal of lsclient, it completely changes Lansweeper for us and makes it 80% less useful to us. We will be exploring other inventory software.

[sullivane]

If you think about it, after scan deployment (intending to or not), is PERFECT for keeping minor software up to date. LS scans the device, if the software is out of date it gets pushed out. The machine is obviously turned on and the software just updates.

I run into issues when multiple software need to be updated at the same time however as the after scan doesn't wait.

[sullivane]

Thank you. I had already talked with your support about 2 years ago about lspush triggering an after scan because lspush was far better as you pointed out. They told me flat out you would not change that.

Maybe things have changed since you dropped lsclient?

If lspush would trigger an after scan, that would be awesome and perfect.

[Susan_A]

I see we received a support ticket from sullivane about this as well. Just to clarify:

• LsClient was decommissioned in favor of LsPush because both were deployed in the same way (e.g. through logon scripts) and because LsPush has many advantages over LsClient. LsPush cannot generate firewall or access denied scanning errors for instance while LsClient can, because LsClient is not a true scanning agent.
  
• If I understand correctly, the reason sullivane specifically wants LsClient is because he can combine LsClient with After Scanning deployments, but cannot do the same with LsPush. Instead of bringing LsClient back in this case, it would make more sense to me to support After Scanning deployments when using LsPush, as Michael.V is also suggesting.
  
• We'll discuss support for After Scanning deployments when using LsPush with our development team. However, you could also scan your machines as they come online by using Active Directory Domain scanning. When combined with After Scanning deployments, this would also allow you to update your machines as they come online. This is something our support engineers suggested in sullivane's support ticket as well.

[Michael_V]

Lspush does not trigger the after scan deployment

Is changing this behaviour a good solution for your requirements? (lspush triggering a deployment?)

[jprateragg]

Now we did not use Lansweeper for software deployments. We did use it for some small things like scripts or some one-off uninstalls of some software. For everything else though, especially maintaining uniformity across the district, we used Microsoft SCCM. It does MS updates deployments, software deployments, and OS deployments, and enforces those policies and deployments. We used Lansweeper strictly for inventory management.

[sullivane]

That's what I am doing now, trying to put in LSPush so we can at least limp along. We'll have to figure out how we can keep the software up to date a different way or switching to different inventory software.

We have an "energy nazi" in our district that is in charge of energy conservation. I am pretty sure he'd have a heart attack if we kept our computers on 24/7.

Not to mention most of our machines are now laptops which reside in carts and it's not as easy to leave those on as it is desktops.

[jprateragg]

Yeah, it might have cost a little more to keep them on all the time, but we had the most up-to-date and secure systems of any other school district that I've talked to.

Why not just use lspush so at least you can capture every logon event, then let active scanning take care of everything else?

[sullivane]

Wow, I would hate to be the taxpayer that has to pay that power bill. That's a complete waste of money.

We like that it gets scanned right away after login, so we know who has used the computer and when. So when there is a question about the use of a lab or student misuse of district technology we have something to reference. It's something we've used many many times.

Maybe it is the best, but the fact that they made this change and reduced the functionality for us by 80% makes me want to take our money elsewhere.

Now I am spending the entire day trying to make all kinds of changes to LanSweeper to keep it limping until we can figure out what we are going to do when I don't have time for this.

I see very little reason to remove LSCLIENT, as all it did was tell the server where to scan. Seems like something that wouldn't matter to anything else.

[jprateragg]

As someone who used to manage a public school network with over 5,000 computers, I can honestly say Lansweeper is the best tool to inventory your network. And we never used lspush or lsclient.

You really need to look into active scanning. You can set it to scan AD for logon events every 15 minutes, which should be more than enough to inventory a computer before it's been turned off. And assuming students/teachers leave the computers on for more than 15 minutes, it should be enough time for your applications to get deployed.

I know technology among school districts varies widely, but you should probably make it policy that all machines stay powered on just so you don't run into situations like the one you're in. We required all machines to stay on 24/7 so they stayed up to date with MS patches, software deployments, AV scanning, etc.