No more hiding in the server room
Deploying Desktops
What's your preferred method of deploying standard builds / images to desktop and laptop clients?
At my place we use a combination of Ghost and UIU to standardise on one image regardless of hardware but with the new resources for Win7 I find myself revisiting the project again and am intrigued as to how other people manage it.
Do you deploy standard images / builds?
How many clients do you cover?
How many different images do you have to have on hand?
What experiences good or bad have you had with the different methods?
At my place we use a combination of Ghost and UIU to standardise on one image regardless of hardware but with the new resources for Win7 I find myself revisiting the project again and am intrigued as to how other people manage it.
Do you deploy standard images / builds?
How many clients do you cover?
How many different images do you have to have on hand?
What experiences good or bad have you had with the different methods?
Views: 132
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Wesley "Nonapeptide" on
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I'm rethinking this whole "IT" thing.
My deployment strategy consists of handing employees one Mead notebook per quarter along with a pencil, an inkpen and some crayons.
Surprisingly, productivity hasn't shown any noticeable decrease.
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Permalink Reply by John McGrath on -
Wow! I think I might go to your deployment strategy!
A few questions though...
1. What color pads? Do you change paper color by department?
2. How do you keep them from fighting over the crayons?
:-)
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Permalink Reply by Charlie Rudinger on -
wow... maybe a Mead is cheaper than the coloring books I give our button pushers..
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Permalink Reply by Jason Short on -
We use two different images that cover most of the software we use, and customize them if necessary. (For example, the marketing department needs Photoshop, etc. But for three workstations, it's not worth maintaining a separate image)
We have a little under 300 workstations, probably 2/3rds of which use one of the standard images.
It's been a long and bumpy road, but we've got both images supporting all the different hardware we have.
For cloning, we use a hardware device that will clone IDE and/or SATA drives. That's not ideal, in my opinion - pulling the drive out of a computer isn't _hard_, but it seems like a waste of time. Other than that, we just use the standard Microsoft tools - sysprep, etc.
Up until recently that hasn't been a problem, but this summer we're moving to a new headquarters - with probably 150 new machines to build. We'll probably do Windows 7 on those.
I've been playing with Windows Deployment Services in my home lab - and I'm pretty impressed. It doesn't feel "polished" but I think it would be usable.
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Permalink Reply by John McGrath on
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We deploy a 'Corporate' standard image to all of our desktops, and add software packages as required.
The Corporate imaging team created the image with driver sets for the 6 different models that are deployed throughout our site, and since they validate it, we have a hands off policy.
We (reluctuantly, more so with each month) have a Altiris Server that deploys that image. To say it has been without issues is an understatement.
Before we were bought, we used "Ghost" and created images locally. While slow to build, we had total control of the process, which we don't have now.
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You have a whole team dedicated to corporate imaging? Wow... must be a massive company.
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Permalink Reply by John McGrath on
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Its a Global Corp, and there are 20+ sites.
Yeah, don't let the word 'Team' mislead you... I believe it is just four people who directly work on the images.
Would you mind if I brought up your deployment solution to my local IT group?
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I think 4 people is enough to call it a "Team". That's exactly 3 more people than my current IT department has. In fact, I am the department.
Yes, you can quote my deployment strategy. I'm thinking of switching to mechanical pencils though. to many people chewing on the wooden ones and getting splinters in their tongues.
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Permalink Reply by John McGrath on
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Ah..
But that's a feature, right?
Besides, that is also improper use of equipment.
Mechanical pencils will require retraining, and that means scheduling classes, the inevitable people that will not 'get it' and require hand-holding, requests to Finance for the upgraded equipment, and then inventory control issues....
How many PC's do you support?
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I support about a dozen PCs. It's a small office to say the least. =)
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Permalink Reply by Charlie Rudinger on
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We have about 300 machines here and since our corporate sell off/take over we've been doing the Windows Deployment over the network using pixy booting. Our new image is pretty standard. XP pro with MS Office 2k3. Nothing special really... all our old software doesn't work any more since the big change. We used to use Ghost and image the machines specific to their departments. We at the time were also a major corporation with 100+ sites.
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Permalink Reply by Joel Hansen on
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What changes are their for Windows 7? Does Server 2008 allow you to clone? We have nothing in place really (winpe image on DVD) so please...I am listening tell me what is out there.
I am looking for all the Microsoft possibilities of how to do this. There would be NO money in the purse for such tools, so we would have to use what Microsoft gave us.
I know I could use one of the servers for the purpose of imaging, and would LOVE to be able to keep server image on this one as well.
We usually have 5-6 servers (2 web, 2 database, and one backup/Media server) which would also carry the role of being...answer server and hold images. So, those who are using PXE method I am listening.
Maybe NOT for this discussion...however I started using my own license for a Imaging program...really good and functional and much cheaper than the LEADING names...anyone else using or compared both? (Terabyte Unlimited/WindowsImage vs. Acronis) It seems that Terabyte has a couple more steps to use, however it justified by cost.
Thanks!
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