Desktop Deployment Methods - What method do you employ?

[ctbjs]

This is just a general query as I have seen many varying ways in which this is done within the school environment and thought that by raising this topic we may be able to formulate a standard of best practise for our schools so that we can all do this the best way.

Personally I have RIS installed on a server and use this purely for the PXE environment, I then use ghost 7.0...yes ghost 7.0 to create images and use the multicast option so that i can do a whole room at once. \well, I did until I came to my present school where the jerkovs have, for some reason, disable multicasting on the switches as well as password protecting them and not left the all important passwords. I could reset them during the summer I suppose but FFS.

Anyway what solution do you guys employ and does it work for you?

[ChrisH]

Fully automated flat RIS image. All awkward apps are deployed on an automatic first boot using silent installers and/or autoit scripts.

[Ric_]

WDS all the way (should really use is new name after all).

[GrumbleDook]

Still using RIS until the lads have worked out if there will be issues swapping to WDS

[tosca925]

Still ising RIS here as well, we have set up WDS but as of yet we have not created any images yet.

[john]

WDSing

[contink]

WDS-legacy myself...

Working ok but proving problematic with some NICs... but that's a hardware issue :P

[simongrahamuk]

WDS in leagacy mode, then into ghost corp 10.

[StewartKnight]

thinking about NetRunna, but it's expensive!

[limbo]

HP / Toshiba recovery CD's when needed - but I think this is only two desktops this year that have needed reinstalling.

All software is pushed out through MSI's so the basic XP install is enough.

I am curious - how often do you guys find you need to reinstall a PC - it is not enough here to justify spending any time setting something like RIS or WDS up. We used to use Ghost under Windows 98 but under XP we just have not found the need.

Or is it something that is just done as a matter of course every few months to keep the PC's healthy?

I realise how the above might sound patronising - but it is meant as a genuine question as there maybe something I am missing.

[_Bat_]

Meh, we do it quite a slow way, but it works for us as primary schools.

We build the image, sysprep it, then use BartPE to copy the image to the server. Then we use BartPE on all the other machines to copy the image across to them. On a large amount of PCs, we'd normally get three or four BartPE CDs and do three or four at a time. Slow, but works

[daveyboy]

ZenWorks

@limbo

We have 7 computer suites - and some very inventive students.

As a possible average - about once every 4-5 weeks.

Although - ZenWorks makes this so easy!! 8)

[ajbritton]

RIS/WDS for OS then GPO for software.

[limbo]

We have 7 computer suites - and some very inventive students.

We have 19 computer suites so size is possible not the factor here - what kind of things do your "inventive students" get up to?

[daveyboy]

@limbo

I've PM'd you.