Re: Strategy for "one-off" tasks

[David Douthitt]

On Thursday, July 10, 2003, at 05:34  PM, Darren Dunham wrote:

> I think the idea is "why would you need to perform a one-time-only
> task"?  Can you give an example of what this would be?  Why would it 
> not
> need to be performed if a machine were being installed?  (possibly for 
> a
> conversion of somthing)?

One thing I've been thinking about for a while is some way to do a 
controlled roll-out, which is similar to a one-off command.

Controlled update roll-outs are making this more of a necessity.  THe 
idea is that I can update certain machines now, more machines one week 
later, and more machines the week after that, until all are done.  This 
is related to a one-time-only task in that this sort of thing would 
only be done periodically.

Installs also come to mind.  There are certain things I don't want done 
all the time that are only done during an installation.  If the 
installation requirements change (that is, a new utility needs to be 
installed) then I would want to install that utility once only 
throughout the enterprise.