Schedule software distribution to download, then execute locally if downloaded at night

I would like to achieve the following scenario:

- Consider an .exe of 1GB that can be executed silently, placed on a server

- .exe needs to be installed on computers on a remote location, in the same internal network; so a slow connection

- .exe would take about a day or two to finish downloading, but installation is only about 30 minutes.

What I would like to achieve but have no idea how is the following:

1. User gets an advertisement to download content locally while their computer is on 2. Every evening from 10pm to midnight, SCCM checks which computers have finished downloading the .exe, and if they have finished - installs the package.

Thank you

March 7th, 2014 5:39am

What do you want to solve exactly? The ConfigMgr client is able to download the file using BITS and that download would also survive a reboot etc. The installation will start as soon as the download finished. You could make use of business hours and/or maintenance windows if you want to control the installation time.
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March 7th, 2014 5:48am

If I were to set business hours/maintenance windows to the evenings, would that mean they would only download in the evening? Or can I set them to download whenever, but only install in the evenings? 
March 7th, 2014 6:00am

 Maintenance windows affect only when the program runs; packages configured to download and run locally can still download content outside of the maintenance window.

This goes into detail about the process used and your options.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2012/03/28/business-hours-vs-maintenance-windows-with-system-center-2012-configuration-manager.aspx

and this

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb694295.aspx

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March 7th, 2014 6:53am

Additionally, using BITS throttling, you can restrict the download of content to off hours.

Then, using MWs if needed, you can constrain when the app is actually installed. If the content is not actually there though, then the deployment can't be initiated.

Basically, don't mix up content download with application/package installation. They are two different things and both are handled as such. Execution certainly depends upon content download and deployments kick off both, but they still are two distinct things.

March 7th, 2014 9:23am

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