Quickly Running Prechecks for Autodesk Vault

A winning effort begins with preparation.
Joe Gibbs

***Edit  7-August-2012***

If we take notice Theo's comment below, he very astutely pointed out that Autodesk doesn't recommend this practice in the post at this link, which frankly, I was not aware of. 

In that light, I considered removing the post, but instead have opted to leave it in place, as in the spirit of "a lesson from the real world", this is indeed that life lesson. 

To that end, I have used this .process with success in the past, in an installation this week it saved me a great deal of difficulty by finding issues before I arrived on site

But I will also be more cautious where I use this process, I'll likely use it on new installs, where I know IIS isn't running other processes.  

So yes, I leave this post up with a word of warning, but I leave it up nonetheless

***End Edit***

When getting ready for installing the Autodesk Vault Data Management Console (the server side of Autodesk Vault), a little prechecking can go quite a long way.

One of the tools Autodesk has provided for us is the Autodesk Server Diagnostic Tools.  During the installation, the Vault installation runs these checks to make sure that it's ready to accept the Vault installation.

If it finds something wrong, it tells you, and provides possible solutions to help rectify the situation.

An example of a precheck screen.  Clicking on the link will show possible solutions for this error.

In my experience, the tool does an excellent job of helping fix the issues by providing possible solutions.  Granted, it can't solve every last little thing, but it does get several issues you might encounter.

If it has any drawback, it's that the installation has to be started before the precheck runs.  This isn't a huge problem, but it can take a little while to step through the installation screens before you get to the precheck.

Then if the precheck finds a problem, you may be stuck repeating the process again.

So what do you do if you're not quite ready for the installation?  Maybe you're local reseller is going to perform the installation next week, or perhaps you want to minimize potential server downtime.  Wouldn't it be convenient to quickly run the precheck and see if you're ready for the ADMS install?

Fortunately there is a way.  If you know where to look, you can run the prechecks without having to start the installation!

It's pretty easy to locate. 

Whether you've downloaded your media from the Autodesk Subscription site, or you have physical media in your hands, the location is.

....\x64\ADMS\Program Files\Autodesk\ADMS 2013\Tools

The executable is "ScriptTool.exe", so you can also just search for the executable file in the installation directories.

The actual executable to run the precheck.

Now there's a means to run the precheck quickly, and fix as much as possible before going for the "big show!"

So for a little help, here's the video showing the process!