Adobe Installation and Licensing

One of the things the Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition is missing is well, let’s admit it: marketing. It wouldn’t be five names long now would it if someone in Adobe’s marketing were involved? It would be something spiffy like Adobe Spiffy. We don’t have a cool icon or logo. Not likely to see an AAMEE banner ad anytime soon. We don’t even have t-shirts to promote ourselves. If we did, I guess it would have to be XL to fit the words Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition on it. That is why I have taken it upon myself to start marketing AAMEE and I am starting with this blog title. AAMEE 1.2: Best Release Ever! Clearly hyperbole is what we’ve been missing! Before you know it people will be using AAMEE like a verb like they do Photoshop. “I AAMEE’d that package in like 6 minutes.” Okay, probably not.

Jokes aside the AAMEE crew has been hard at work on this release. And it really is the best release. You know why? 100% of the features came from you. Every new feature with the 1.2 release was based on your feedback. Here’s what you get in 1.2:

• Packages can be deployed from mounted DMGs!
This has been requested since Day 1. Or maybe even sooner, like Hour 1. This is a nice time saver that I am glad we finally got to include.

• AIR components can now be excluded on the Mac.
Certain workflows as well as proxy servers that require manual authentication are just a couple of reasons why an IT admin might need to exclude the AIR components during the CS installation process. We have provided instructions in the new Deployment Guide on how the AIR components can be installed via command line. The biggie being the Community Help application aka CHC. I hope to do a whole blog post on this topic in the new year. There’s something to look forward to. 2011 is looking up already.

• Updates are installed directly from ZIP and DMG files.
This is a pretty great new feature. You no longer have to mount your update files. You just select the ZIP (Windows) or DMG (Mac) files directly. You can even open up a folder of downloaded updates, select all via your keyboard and important them all into AAMEE at once. Nice!

But wait, there’s more. If you download AAMEE today we’ll also throw in two other five word name IT tools for free. Yep, the companion tools to AAMEE, Adobe Provisioning Toolkit Enterprise Edition (APTEE) and Adobe Update Server Setup Tool (AUSST) are now included in the install of AAMEE 1.2. Their locations of the installed apps are listed in the Read Me.

So don’t walk, run to the Creative Suite Enterprise Deployment site where you can get AAMEE 1.2, new Read Me and a brand new updated Deployment Guide all for the low, low cost of… free:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/creativesuite/enterprisedeployment.html

One last marketing ploy: Wouldn’t AAMEE 1.2 make a great holiday gift?

Jody Rodgers | Product Manager| Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite

Tanvi Dharmarha and Sanjeev Biswas are engineers from the CS Provisioning team, providing the licensing and activation solution for Adobe Creative Suite 5 and other Adobe products.

In the enterprise world, a license is owned by a single person or company, and the license grants to that person or company the permission to install and use a product on multiple computers. The number of computers allowed is specified as part of the license agreement. In this context, a 24 digit number generated by Adobe used as a key for serialization is called a volume serial number. To silently serialize the product installed on multiple computers with this volume serial number is called Volume Provisioning.

Currently there is no convenient way to provision all apps silently. In addition, it is challenging to handle field deployment issues related to volume provisioning; such as serializing (or re‐serializing) an already installed product.

To address this need we created APTEE (Adobe Provisioning Toolkit Enterprise Edition), a command line utility that can silently provision apps on multiple computers by execution of a single command. APTEE is a single executable which operates silently so that it is easily deployed with enterprise tools. APTEE can serialize apps by executing a single command.

Serialize and Unserialize

Suppose a company has a license agreement for 200 Photoshop users, 200 InDesign users, 200 Illustrator users and 200 who use multiple Design Suite Premium products. It may be much more cost effective to install a single package containing the Design Suite Premium products on all 800 machines; but, it is not acceptable to use 800 Design Suite Premium licenses when the license agreement stipulates only 200. APTEE provides a solution that allows the customer to deploy with Suite media but serialize only specific products.

• Serializing a single product installed via suite: An enterprise administrator can package only Photoshop using DesignPremium media and install Photoshop on all user machines in trial. She can then serialize only Photoshop by providing the Photoshop serial number. She does not have to purchase the DP Suite Serial Number.

Usage:

adobe_prtk.exe ‐‐tool=ReplaceSN ‐‐serialize=Photoshop‐CS5‐Win‐GM ‐‐serial=

• Cross Suite Serialization: An enterprise administrator can install all applications of MasterCollection using MasterCollection media and purchase the license of a cheaper suite, say DesignPremium. The administrator can then serialize using the DesignPremium serial number.

Usage:

adobe_ prtk.exe ‐‐tool=ReplaceSN ‐‐serialize=DesignSuitePremium‐CS5‐Win‐GM ‐‐serial=

• Custom Serialization: In the case of customized application deployment, the administrator can package Master Collection media by specifying only some apps like Photoshop and AfterEffects. The administrator can specify a Master Collection serial number to install protected content. After installation, the administrator can unserialize first to remove the Master Collection serialization and then serialize to add PhotoShop and AfterEffects serial numbers separately.

Usage:

adobe_ prtk.exe ‐‐tool=ReplaceSN ‐‐serialize=MasterCollection‐CS5‐Win‐GM ‐‐serial=
adobe_ prtk.exe ‐‐tool=ReplaceSN ‐‐unserialize= MasterCollection‐CS5‐Win‐GM adobe_prtk.exe ‐‐tool=ReplaceSN ‐-serialize=Photoshop‐CS5‐Win‐GM ‐‐serial=
adobe_prtk ‐‐tool=ReplaceSN ‐‐serialize=AfterEffects‐CS5‐Win‐GM ‐‐serial=

Reserialize and MakeReplacementSN

APTEE also provides a solution for reserializing apps. First a pseudo-serial number is created by encrypting the old and new serial numbers. The pseudo-serial number is then used with the ReplaceSN option to replace an existing serial number. The special pseudo-serial number is only usable on a machine that has already been serialized with the old serial number. Thus there is no concern about the new serial number getting into the wild.

As an example, let’s say an enterprise has 200 machines. Out of those 200 machines, 100 users have Photoshop installed and serialized with a Photoshop Extended serial number. The administrator can reserialize those 100 machines with Photoshop Standard serial number in a simple way without having to worry about remaining machines that were not serialized with Photoshop Extended.

Usage:

adobe_prtk.exe –tool=MakeReplacementSN ‐‐old=PS Extended SN ‐‐new=PS Standard SN

Output:

pseudo-serial number

adobe_prtk.exe –tool=ReplaceSN ‐‐reserialize=product LEID ‐‐replacement=pseudo-serial number

Inventory Tool

Customers currently have no easy, accurate, scalable way to track the actual status of licenses deployed to machines without purchasing third party Software Asset Management tools. The resulting uncertainty in license usage is undesirable for customers and Adobe. APTEE provides a way to read the pcd files and return an XML block containing the complete inventory of a given machine. This is useful for enterprises trying to automate license audits as it helps determine how many licenses are deployed and in use.

Usage:

adobe_prtk.exe –tool=InventorySN

I am happy to announce the release of the much anticipated Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition (AAMEE) 1.1. This release has the ability to turn our CS updates that come down from Adobe.com in the format of .zip files on Windows and .dmg files on Macs into MSI and PKG files for easy deployment. You can do this singularly or better yet combine them into a big bundle of updates into one MSI or PKG. Want to deploy your CS5 applications and our updates at the same time? AAMEE 1.1 can do that too. Create your own “über-package” of CS applications with their updates and deploy them at the same time with one MSI or PKG. Cool, right?

And if that weren’t enough, we have released two new deployment tools for IT admins: Adobe Provisioning Toolkit Enterprise Edition (APTEE) and Adobe Update Server Setup Tool (AUSST.) Yes, we are continuing our 5 letter acronym spree! Put the three tools names together and you almost have enough letters to play Boggle™. Both new tools are command line based and I believe you’ll find them quite helpful. The Adobe Provisioning Toolkit Enterprise Edition (APTEE) tool allows you to serialize, unserialize or reserialize installed CS applications. The Adobe Update Server Setup Tool (AUSST) allows you to configure a server on your network to become the local location for acquiring CS updates.

We’ll have blog postings that dig further into each of these tools coming soon but I wanted to let you know right away about the three tools so you can download them and their documentation.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/creativesuite/enterprisedeployment.html

NOTE: The Adobe Developer Connection website and new tools on them may be unavailable for a brief time in the near future for a site-based update. So…get ‘em quick! Don’t worry, they will return once the revamped site goes online. The tools should be available on LWS as well.

9/13/10 6:43 PM PST UPDATE: The new Adobe Developer Connection website is up and the new tools are once again available. Sorry for anyone who was inconvenienced during the down time.

Jody Rodgers
Product Manager, Enterprise & Volume Customers
Creative Suite