Snapshot of several 5 gigabyte programs to an MSI with Admin Studio 2018

[ojopablo]

Good Morning, Is it possible to capture an MSI package in admin studio 2018, whose package consists of several programs, all of which add up to a weight of almost 5 Gigabites?
when the snapshot is done is not created MSI, gives many errors and does not capture that volume of data in the MSI.

Regards

[kmantagi]

I understand, you are running the 'Snapshot Method' in Repackager to capture the installation of various legacy setups (.exe) into a single MSI setup file. The size of these legacy setups put together is about 5GB. After installation capture, you are seeing various errors while building the MSI file and eventually the MSI file creation fails. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Could you please share the  log file: 'Build Log.txt' that will be created in the repackaged output folder while building the MSI file. You should be able to see the location of the log file in the logs that appear in Repackager UI, as seen and highlighted in the attached screenshot:

[moconn]

Hello @ojopablo -

What would be the reason behind you wanting to capture several programs and create one MSI package from their installations?  Are they collection of a main program and several prerequisites? Or is this to make distribution of a set of programs going to a common set of machines / users easier?

There are several challenges with capturing multiple installers and putting them all into one MSI, one of which is the size constraints you'll hit. The Windows Installer (MSI) format itself, developed by Microsoft, is limited to 2GB for each of its .cab files. For a 5GB size, this means you will not be able to have a single compressed MSI but will have the installer's "payload" outside of the MSI in several .cab files. Also, moving a single large file (of anything) can pose challenges with potential data corruption when moving from one location to another. 

The other big challenge to capturing multiple programs into one MSI repackaged installer is:  how will those individual programs get updated?  If you capture everything into one MSI and one of those programs needs to be updated, you cannot easily push out an MSI that updates only that program and that would be of a manageable size.  You'd have to continue to repackage and build new  5GB+ MSIs installers every time one of those program needs an update, or create a patch update (MSP), which can be tricky as well.

If you need to deploy the same applications to multiple machines, it's better to look at the distribution system you're using to see if you can "bundle" these applications together into one deployment. Systems like Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager allow you to set up dependencies between applications that will intelligently deploy the prerequisites provided for the main application if an end point needs it. AdminStudio can help populate this dependency information, as well as a lot more, into ConfigMgr; more info here: https://helpnet.flexerasoftware.com/adminstudio2019r2/adminstudio.htm#helplibrary/ASViewPkgDeployData.htm

For silent, local installations where a technician may want a single package to run, it's recommended to look at something like our Suite / Advanced UI project type* in the InstallShield Editor. This project type can take in multiple MSIs, EXEs, PowerShell, etc. and create an EXE "launcher" that would act as a single installer for the user or distribution system, but still install all of the programs as if they were installed separated, allowing for a much easier process to upgrade them individually later on. More info on this bundling/launching feature in the InstallShield help here: https://helpnet.flexerasoftware.com/installshield25helplib/installshield25helplib.htm#helplibrary/SteCreatingSuites.htm

(* requires AdminStudio Enterprise to bundle multiple installers using the Suite / Advanced UI project type in the InstallShield Editor)