Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

McAfee Shores Up Your Defenses

I tested a beta copy of ePo 3.0 on a Windows 2000 server in our Syracuse University Real-World Labs®. Syracuse has been using ePo 2.5 for the past year to manage desktop virus protection, and Network Computing editors here have offered improvement ideas to McAfee. The ePo software consists of the ePo server, which contains the database of managed clients; a console application used to manage the server from administrators' workstations; and an ePo agent installed on the managed machines. The software uses a Microsoft database back end that lets you choose between Microsoft SQL Desktop Engine (MSDE), included as part of the install, and Microsoft SQL Server.

I chose SQL Server 2000 because of the limitations with MSDE that would have confined me to managing a mere 5,000 clients.

I set up the server OS and SQL Server with patches and installed ePo easily. The software self-installs its required packages and creates the appropriate database structure, automatically detecting your installed database and adjusting itself appropriately.

To manage the software remotely, ePo contains a console-only client application that communicates to the server via ODBC and ePo client-server protocols. I installed console software on a remote desktop after creating the required ODBC connections to the server database.

I configured the software to deploy and manage products, manage machines, enforce the policies and report on compliance policies. Although deploying and managing software is much easier in an NT Domain environment, because of the trust relationships that are part of that structure, it is possible to use ePo without a domain. I installed the software I wanted to manage into the ePo server database and created the appropriate policies within console.

  • 1