Firewall Nags [SOLVED]

- October 23, 2018 at 7:25 pm
  
  Rev_Eddie
  Subscriber
  
  Good afternoon, folks,
  
  I'm working on an unattended (and silent) installation of ANSYS Academic via our SCCM deployment server. All is well as far as deployment goes. The issue I'm having is with the five (5) prompts to create firewall exceptions when the software is first launched. We're a university and ANSYS is going to be deployed to a lab full of students. For security reasons, students are not allowed to make changes to the firewall. Additionally, the systems are protected by Deep Freeze so any and all changes are reversed on system restart. I have tried making the required firewall edits as part of the installation routine, however, ANSYS continues to prompt for changes and we end up with duplicate rules in the firewall. Is there any way to pre-configure ANSYS to stop nagging about firewall rules and just use the ones I've created during deployment?
  
  Thanks,
  
  Eddie
- October 23, 2018 at 8:41 pm
  
  tsiriaks
  Ansys Employee
  
  Hi Eddie,
  
  If you created the rule during the deployment, the popup that shows when using the software should be for different exe files or same name but from different path. It shouldn't be exact duplicate but it could end up to be the same Firewall Rule name.
  
  Depending on what software students will be using. But in general, I would include the following directories
  
  v1xx
  
  v1xxFrameworkbinWin64
  
  v1xxaisolbinwinx64
  
  v1xxAddinsACTbinWin64
  
  v1xxfluentntbinwin64
  
  v1xxCFXbin
  
  v1xxANSYSbinwinx64
  
  v1xxSCDM
  
  I would loop the "netsh advfirewall firewall add rule ......" through these directories to add Windows Firewall exceptions to all .exe under these.
  
  Thank you,
  
  Win
- October 24, 2018 at 6:25 pm
  
  Rev_Eddie
  Subscriber
  
  @ tsiriaks
  
  A fresh set of eyes this morning helped me resolve the issue along with clues in your reply. It turned out to be an id10t error caused by yours truly and not enough caffeine. I had correctly scripted the firewall rules but only for TCP...I didn't do any for UDP. Once I took a closer look at my code, I realized the rules were identical except for protocol. Thus the appearance of duplicates. So, I added the UDP rules and all is well. Crawling back under my rock now. Thanks for the help.
  - November 16, 2023 at 12:29 pm
    
    Michael Bollands
    Subscriber
    
    Hi, I am in a similiar state with regards implementing ANSYS v2023 R2 via SCCM and am considerig Windows Firewall Rule additions as part of an automated, silent, scripted install, would you be able to post the FW rules you added, executables, Protocols, Ports etc?
- October 24, 2018 at 6:42 pm
  
  tsiriaks
  Ansys Employee
  
  Hi Eddie,
  
  That's good news.
  
  Thank you for the update.
  
  Win