Imaging Machines

[gshaw]

SMS 2003 and OSD feature pack here, works a treat Choose machines to image, advertise the OS et voila all done. Was surprised how quick it did our machines in summer, about 45 mins per room

Cost us peanuts as we're on Campus License plus we get all the other SMS goodies, reporting etc. Haven't upgraded to SCCM as it can't image machines before you import their MAC addresses at the moment, fixed in R2 according to the roadmap (so why not just fix it in the first place )

Before that we used RIS, not particularly pleasant, haven't tried WDS out yet as it's basically bits of the OSD system anyway...

[Singist]

I use Trinity Rescue Kit . You could use the mclone facility and image 30 machines over your network in 30 minutes?. Just boot pc's via pxe, it finds the trk boot server and away you go. Very easy instructions, I can post if you need them. This software is freeware and it has some other nifty uses to i.e password recovery, samba fileserver for file loss/recovery amongst other things.

[reggiep]

Can anyone give me some pointers with sysprep?
I've used it before but used someone elses .inf file so I have never had to set it up from scratch.

Do I need syspep, setupcl and the sysprep.inf file all in a folder call sysprep on the root of c: ?

Then I need to set up the sysprep.inf file, which I do not know what to do!

Can anyone help out?

Thanks

[pagelad]

If you look on an XP cd in teh support folder you should find a cab file called deploy,

Extract that to c:\sysprep on the machine you want to sysprep.

Then run the file setupmgr, you will then have a GUI screen you can create anser files and sysprep files from in a wizard.

[reggiep]

Ah yes, Thanks for that. I had a go with it but failed. I had another go at your suggestion and using the mini setup option worked for me.

[sparkeh]

I am torn between checking out FOG or clonezilla, only really got time to go for one at the moment.

Anyone tried both? Thoughts?

[Ste_Harve]

Right well I use WDS. It takes a minute or two to boot into the deployment client and from there the whole process is automated after i've selected the image. All my machines are staged in the directory so it automatically pulls in machine names for each machine. Can do a whole room in about 30-45 mins.

If anyone needs any help on using WDS drop me a PM and i'll try and sort it out. It took me a few days to get it set up to automatically name the machines, but now thats sorted it's easy. I use this for XP images, not had time to look at using it with vista yet, but it's on the todo list, as i'm wanting to move some machines over to vista, mainly some office machines.

[danrhodes]

We use HD Clone, very good for client to client, as we had problems with SATA and ghost.

What problems did you come accross with Ghost and SATA, what version of ghost do you use?

Im using the latest v12 or something. I like the version on the Hiren CD as it can ghost back to USB Drives which can be very usefull at times.

If you would like to try the Disk out the link is - Removed link to cd with illegal content

D

[plexer]

Unless you have the relevant licences for the software on that cd you shouldn't be using it.

Ben

[maniac]

I am torn between checking out FOG or clonezilla, only really got time to go for one at the moment.

Anyone tried both? Thoughts?

I've recently setup a FOG server, and can throughly recommend it. There's a few improvements that could be made, but nothing that stops it being a very useful tool. You get a lot of added extras with FOG, as well as an imaging solution it also allows you to do things like change host names remotely, user tracking, printer management, full workstation hardware inventory and a whole host of other diagnostic and useful tools that are all PXE bootable. The management of the whole system is though an easy to use web based interface and it's a doddle to setup. I've got it running on ubuntu linux on an old Dell server and it's very stable and quick, but it will run happily on most linux builds and there's plenty of guides on installing it on the net.

Mike.

[Singist]

I've also used Clonezilla, Its very easy to use either over a network or standalone. It's especially good for laptops

[jamin100]

+1 for Ghost Console.
I use it to deploy all my images and then use it to deply all the software packages too.

[MatthewL]

Thanks for all the replies, I can now go away and have a look at some of them and see what would be best for me.

Thanks once again.

[speckytecky]

Unless you have the relevant licences for the software on that cd you shouldn't be using it.

Ben

Valid, no doubt Ben but which CD are you talking about?