Deploying files to remote machines

Question

I need to deploy a set of configuration files to a hundred or more Windows hosts.

I have the IP addresses, the user name and password, and the location on the remote machines into which the files should be copied - and was wondering if there was anything in the .NET framework that would let me utilise all that info to move these files?

Answer 1

Sounds like a job for powershell (assumes powershell v1.0 on your machine - doesn't have to be on servers):

-- begin info.csv --

ipaddress, username, password, path   (<- header)
1.2.3.4, foo, bar, "c:\temp"
5.6.7.8, dog, cat, "c:\temp\foo" 
...

-- end info.csv --

And here's a script which assumes the existance of the above CSV file in the same path.

import-csv info.csv | foreach-object {

    trap { 
       net use t: /delete
       continue
    }

    $root = "\\{0}\{1}" -f $_.ipaddress, ($_.path -replace ':', '$')
    net use t: $root $_.password /user:$_.username
    copy myconfig.config t:
    net use t: /delete
}

This came out of my head, so you might need to tweak it a little but you get the idea.

-Oisin

Answer 2

If they're on your AD network, what we usually do is ask our Networking department to deploy them via Group Policy. Since you can build an installer in Visual Studio to install anything (it doesn't have to be an application), you could use this for configuration files as well.

Note: I have no experience with the network end of things. If this is a possibility you may want to ask the question on Server Fault.