Imaging technology limitations when deploying Adobe Creative Suite 4 or Point Products
What's covered
The Adobe Creative Suite 3 and 4 installers were designed to be installed using the silent installation features of our installer in deployment environments. You may have a deployment solution that uses an image based technology. There are some known limitations to this technology because of the licensing technology within our software. For additional information on our supported deployment method please refer to, "Perform a silent installation of Adobe Creative Suite 4 or Point Products" (TechNote kb405451.)
Imaging technology limitations
Deployment technologies exist in two variations:
- Installation based deployment technologies have a cache of the installation files for a product stored on a server and then execute a command against the installer to execute the installation process.
- Image based deployment technology take a snapshot of the machine before a piece of software is installed and after the process has completed. The technology then builds a list of files and/or registry keys that changed on the machine during the process and duplicates that information to be pushed across the network.
The Adobe Creative Suite 3 and 4 installer only supports Installation based deployment technologies. Our licensing information, installation paths, and licensing information are stored in shared files. These files are typically overwritten by imaging based deployment technologies based on the last product installed. Essentially only the last product installed works as expected on the machine. All previous versions of the product generate the error, "Licensing has stopped working" on launch.
Furthermore, most repackaging software use a similar method to record the changes to the machine and will generate the same problem as imaging technology when installed on users machines.
We are aware this conflict exists with the following deployment technologies:
For support boundaries please refer to, "Support boundaries for deployment with Adobe Creative Suite 4 products" (TechNote kb405450.)
Workarounds for limitations
Please refer to the known workaround to the problem presented by this technology below:
Note: We are aware of the problem this creates for our customers and are actively looking for better solutions to the issue.
Solution 1: Create images for all deployment scenarios.
Image based technologies take snap shots of the files in a working state on a machine you will need to create a snapshot for every configuration you will be deploying to your network.
- Take base snapshot of the machine.
- Install all combinations of software you expect on your network taking a snapshot for each configuration.
- Deploy the configuration for the multiple pieces of software required by the user.
Example:
- User requests Photoshop, which you deploy via the Photoshop image.
- User the requests Illustrator. You will now deploy an image which includes Photoshop and Illustrator.
Since all of the images where built after our installer integrated the correct files they will work on the user's machine. Unfortunately the down side to this technique is that it will require additional server space and careful monitoring of the user configuration to ensure the correct software bundle is deployed to their machine.
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