My success story with bootcamp in schools

[Rozzer]

Hi Folks,

Well after my concerns a while back they are no longer there. I thought it would be a good idea to tell you the story of how well the intel macs are running in the school i work in. plus how i managed to do it.

First we had many problems trying to deploy windows. We wanted to make it as easy as possible and not having a mac server as it was delayed did not help. So this is how we managed to image 62 i macs with mac osx and windows xp.

First we setup mac osx with the basic image which is install on the mac osx and set it to work with remote desktop (real life saver).

Once all the macs were setup with remote desktop we then used remote desktop to roll out A. bootcamp B. Net restore C. NTFS utility for net restore. D. Firmware lock

Once all software was installed with just 2 remote desktop tasks we were almost ready.

We then set remote desktop to run bootcamp and then run a apple script which did all the key strokes to set a half and half drive setup. Once it had setup the bootcamp partition we then had to format the drive to NTFS to be readable by net restore.

This part was a little painful but we managed to do it. We managed to get 30 windows XP cds and put it in each mac and then set of bootcamp to install. We then did a quick format of the C: drive on the windows xp setup and once it started to copy files then reset the machine back into mac osx.

Once all the machines had a NTFS formated bootcamp drive we could then deploy our image with net restore.

We first tried using a mac as a server to share the image but because the machine could not handle the load and it was not multi casted it ended up being quite hard. So we simply deployed the win.ntfs file to all the machines desktop. Amazing a 5 gig image was transfered in 15 minutes. Once this was done we then set remote desktop to open net restore. Because i configured net restore before deploying it there was already a config ready to point to the desktops win.ntfs.

Because net restore has a look i was unable to use the apple script key stroke coding to do the job for me so all we did was run around all machines and simply unlock net restore and cllick go.

So after all the horror i was quite impresss at how that went. The company we bought the macs from said the only way they knew was by using a external drive. Which i did not fancy doing as it would take forever.

For the image

We have just recieved our server so i will be deploying mac OSX properly that way. I have also found out how to disable the internal speaks which is handy aswell. We have had excellent reports from students and staff at how impressed they are with the macs. Because we only just recieved out server we have not allowed anyone on mac osx. But because of the power of mac osx tiger server it should take no time to fix that.

Well hope this can help you in the future if you decide to go for the bootcamp way.

Peace out!

Ross

[Roberto]

Well hope this can help you in the future if you decide to go for the bootcamp way.

Peace out!

Ross

That's pretty cool Ross.

[GrumbleDook]

Hi Folks,

<snip>

Well hope this can help you in the future if you decide to go for the bootcamp way.

Peace out!

Ross

Absolutely fantastic ... I've sent this over to a few ASEs to see what they think ...

[Rozzer]

Glad it has been helpful

I just remember there not being much information on bootcamping a lot of machines so thought it would be helpful for people like me

Ross

[HodgeHi]

A wiki might be useful with all applescripts used made available for all none-programming peeps. maybe with screendumps???

It helps with any problems you may have run into along the way (although it doesn't sound like you had many:-) )

[bossman]

Ross2k5, well done that man. How long did it take altogether from start to finish?

[Rozzer]

Well i would say to do both rooms once they were put on the table and wired up. Umm 1week. The only reason it took so long because we did not have our mac server at the time. if we had the mac server i am sure it would of been quicker.

Ross

[webman]

Personally, I'd say the easiest option outright is to just use PCs instead of macs in the first place :P

[Rozzer]

lol i said the exact same thing when they were planning on getting the macs.

[HodgeHi]

But how have they been welcomed? With a cold shoulder or open arms. Now you have been running them for a while. How many serious problems have you encountered?

How has os tiger gone down (assuming the server has now arrived and it has been deployed).

[kingswood]

Cool. This is great information--and very timely ;-)

[Rozzer]

Well we have not used much of Mac osx at the moment as ashton park have recently had a big migration and we are still working around that.

We have had a lot of problems with logicboards in the current Imacs we have, because of this we have had to have a recall of the imacs logic boards. But i am relieved to say that is hardware related. I will be going into a bit more detail about this at the confrence. We have not had many software related problems at all. Even with the hardware problems i am still happy to have the Imacs in here. The company we have brought the macs from have said they are happy to get a engineer in and replace all the logic boards on site. So that is very helpful.

Ross

[Domino]

Ross,

Just seeen your talk at the edugeek conference. Good Job guys, very cool.

I wonder if you could put me in touch with your supplier

[bossman]

Ross; would like to ask probably a dumb question but what was the reason behind the bootcamp in the first place? and how easy would you think it will be for future developments using Macs and PCs combined on the same network?

[GrumbleDook]

You should have come to the conference and you would have found out :-)