CrashPlan mass deployment

Information for ITSS on mass deployment of CrashPlan

Introduction

In a managed environment ideally you would like to be able to deploy CrashPlan to computers within your unit and have it to start to back up a user's files without any interaction on behalf of the user. While that is possible in some tightly integrated corporate environments it is not currently feasible in the University environment.

To use CrashPlan you need:

  • The CrashPlan client installed on your computer
  • An account for the computer user created in the CrashPlan cloud
  • The client to be logged into that account using the user's SSO

The standard set up process for the HFS CrashPlan service is to use the HFS Hub which takes the user through the client download and installation, ensures they have a CrashPlan account, and guides them to the point of client login.

We also support the following deployment scenario (subject to any caveats stated later on) on Windows and on Mac

  1. Both the CrashPlan client and the HFS Hub are deployed to the computer
  2. The computer user (following your instructions) uses the HFS Hub to create a CrashPlan account
  3. The computer user logs the CrashPlan client into their CrashPlan account.

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The CrashPlan client can be downloaded from the CrashPlan console. There may be more than one version available. Make sure you download the version currently deployed at Oxford as sometimes there are good reasons why newer versions are not deployed.

Note the that the CrashPlan client will upgrade itself when a newer version is available. You should make sure your deployment solution copes with this without attempting to downgrade the client again. This does mean that you don't necessarily have to be deploying the latest version of the client as it will upgrade itself after installation. However we do encourage you to keep this relatively up to date.

The latest HFS Hub can be downloaded from the links on the HFS Hub page. Note that the HFS Hub will notify you if it is out of date but if the user does not have admin privileges they will not be able to update. We therefore require you to install the latest version and to install updated when available.
 

The details of deployment will depend on your deployment solution. Both the CrashPlan client and HFS Hub are provided as MSI files and should be deployable by any solution

When deploying the CrashPlan client you should use the arguments

CP_ARGS="DEPLOYMENT_URL=https://console.eu5.cpg.crashplan.com&DEPLOYMENT_POLICY_TOKEN=2d1f2daa-68c9-4277-8c14-8c39aafe15e0" CP_SILENT=false DEVICE_CLOAKED=false /norestart /qn

For example

msiexec /i crashplan.msi CP_ARGS="DEPLOYMENT_URL=https://console.eu5.cpg.crashplan.com&DEPLOYMENT_POLICY_TOKEN=2d1f2daa-68c9-4277-8c14-8c39aafe15e0" CP_SILENT=false DEVICE_CLOAKED=false /norestart /qn

This ensures that Oxford University branding is applied to the client before login. It also allows you to tell the CrashPlan client the user's SSO (if you know it) so they don't have to enter that when they log in. To do that you will need to create the file "%PROGRAMDATA%\HFS Hub\crashplan-deploy.cmd" containing the lines

AGENT_USERNAME=sso@ox.ac.uk
AGENT_USER_HOME=C:\Users\Homedir

with appropriate values for the sso and home directory.

The details of deployment will depend on your deployment solution. The HFS Hub is supplied as a package file. The CrashPlan client is a disk image containing a package file.

When deploying the CrashPlan client you should first deploy the file /Library/Application Support/CrashPlan/deploy.properties containing

DEPLOYMENT_URL=https://console.eu5.cpg.crashplan.com
DEPLOYMENT_POLICY_TOKEN=2d1f2daa-68c9-4277-8c14-8c39aafe15e0
CP_SILENT=false
DEVICE_CLOAKED=false

This ensures that Oxford University branding is applied to the client before login. It also allows you to tell the CrashPlan client the user's SSO (if you know it) so they don't have to enter that when they log in. To do that you will need to create the file /tmp/crashplan-deploy.yyyymmddHHMMSS.sh where yyyymmddHHMMSS is a timestamp (actually it doesn't have to be but it must be 14 characters long). This file must contain the lines

AGENT_USERNAME=sso@ox.ac.uk
AGENT_USER_HOME=/Volumes/Home/User

with appropriate values for the sso and home directory.

User configuration

Unless the user already has a CrashPlan account they must run the HFS Hub and select Set up login from the CrashPlan menu  (if they don't know, do this anyway - it can do no harm). They can then start the CrashPlan client and log in with their SSO. They will then need to select what they want backed up.

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