Application to automate Windows software installation in a test lab
- by Marc
I have several test environments (hyper-V) which contain a variety of windows servers. Each machine needs periodically rolling back to a given snapshot and then re-installing with the latest version of our software to test.
The software installs are quite complex MSI's with a fair few option screens. I know that the installs can be driven from the command line, passing in parameters to override the wizard options.
At the simplest level I suppose I could just write a batch file to kick off each install with the required parameters, however the values that are passed in do need to change from time to time (and environment to environment) so a tool with a config file and simple GUI seems like a better idea.
I think what makes it slightly more painful is the multiple environments. For example one environment might contain 4 servers and need a config file with all the server names, service endpoints etc. Another environment might be a 1-box install with all names and endpoints set to localhost.
So, ideally I want to be able to store different setup configurations and use them to run all the required installers with the relevant settings against the relevant machines. Before I go off to write the thing, does anyone know of an existing, simple, free tool that will let me achieve this?
