Is there any advice for managing software installations downloaded from the web - both free and purchased? Currently we have built up a folder share within which we set up folders for categories of software and then vendor name, title and version, e.g.
\installrepository\devtools\microsoft\visualstudio\vs2008\vs2008en.iso
Usually the install key(s) for our licenses are also in with the install in case we have to rebuild a machine that was torched or migrate them to a new platform.
Are there better ways to do this?
I can't really think of a better way to do that. The one thing we do that I would suggest is this:
We also burn off a couple copies of the download just in case the file server crashes and burns. Also once a month or so sync to a USB drive for the same reason.
But the approach you've taken seems to be the most sensible and probably the best way to do it for day to day use. It's how we do it here.