[WDS] upgradng server

[szachara]

We are using WDS currently and we are running it with Server 2008 on a fairly old server (IBM eserver xseries 235) and we have about 200 GB worth of space available for all of our district images (we have about 4000 devices to image)

Right now we have close to 1 TB worth of images. with the space being limited, we copy images over from our external drive to WDS as needed. Very time consuming.

so we are looking at basically starting over with a new server where we can start off with the right amount of space for our images so we do not have to copy back and forth all the time. What I am working on, to cut down the amount of our images is to inject drivers (something we had not done to this point) so that will cut down on the headache a bit.

I would not think we would need much as far as server specs go, but we do a pretty good amount of imaging and want something sturdy. My question is, since we will probably be getting a new(er) server, what kind of specs do you think we would need or comparatively, what do you guys currently use for your WDS server?

thanks for any assistance you can provide.

steve

[oxide54]

a VM on one of my hosts.

shares with 10+ other VM's on a DL380G5

have you looked into MDT? should handle driver injection for you.

[mhundley]

1TB seems a massive amount of space, have you looked at using MDT? With this you can have a single image for each OS you require and make any changes using a task sequence.

What operating systems are you deploying?
How many different types of hardware?
Are you deploying software within the image?

If you want to deploy either Windows 7 or XP it is fairly easy to set up basic task sequences to perform the installation and then let group policy take over for the software deployment. If you are using the same software in most of your images you can import it into MDT and set any silent install switches as required, these applications can then be installed during the installation of the OS. Similarly with hardware, if you have large amounts of the same model then you only need to import the drivers once and the installation will pick the correct ones and inject as build time.

If you want more information there are plenty of people on here who have got MDT running nicely who will be more than happy to advise you. If you can give some more info on the background of what kind of setup you have then you could have a test system up and running in a short amount of time.

I know this doesn't answer your original question on hardware but in the schools we support we run MDT on the server in school which has to do everything (DHCP,DNS,AD,File & Print server etc) and even when imaging up to 40 machines at a time there is no noticable effect on the servers.
Generally all servers we have put in in the last year will have been Dell T610's with between 8-12Gb ram and teamed Intel gig networking.

[DMcCoy]

a VM on one of my hosts.

shares with 10+ other VM's on a DL380G5

have you looked into MDT? should handle driver injection for you.

As does plain WDS on 2008R2.

imo 2008r2 WDS is the only version worth using, and it's fine without MDT.

[oxide54]

As does plain WDS on 2008R2.

imo 2008r2 WDS is the only version worth using, and it's fine without MDT.

it handles driver injection now?

do you mean into the WIM?

[AngryTechnician]

You don't need to modify the WIM yourself, WDS will inject any drivers you add to it's driver catalog at install time. The only thing you need to modify is the boot.wim to add NIC drivers (if necessary).

[oxide54]

thats what i was getting,

i use sccm so i my wds is "unconfigured" i haven't used wds by itself for a few versions now.

[garethedmondson]

We are using WDS currently and we are running it with Server 2008 on a fairly old server (IBM eserver xseries 235) and we have about 200 GB worth of space available for all of our district images (we have about 4000 devices to image)

Right now we have close to 1 TB worth of images. with the space being limited, we copy images over from our external drive to WDS as needed. Very time consuming.

so we are looking at basically starting over with a new server where we can start off with the right amount of space for our images so we do not have to copy back and forth all the time. What I am working on, to cut down the amount of our images is to inject drivers (something we had not done to this point) so that will cut down on the headache a bit.

I would not think we would need much as far as server specs go, but we do a pretty good amount of imaging and want something sturdy. My question is, since we will probably be getting a new(er) server, what kind of specs do you think we would need or comparatively, what do you guys currently use for your WDS server?

thanks for any assistance you can provide.

steve

Whilst not in the same league we also had WDS with 3 images. EVentually I got fed up of new machines arriving and drivers being injected. So we upgraded our server to 2008R2 and followed the MDT2010 path. We now have 1 Windows 7 Enterprise image with driver packages allocated to different machines.

It takes up less space and works.

Gareth

[oxide54]

Whilst not in the same league we also had WDS with 3 images. EVentually I got fed up of new machines arriving and drivers being injected. So we upgraded our server to 2008R2 and followed the MDT2010 path. We now have 1 Windows 7 Enterprise image with driver packages allocated to different machines.

same as what we do with SCCM, we use WMI queries in the task sequence to decide which drivers to install

[szachara]

Thanks for the answers guys. To answer your questions. Let me elaborate. We are a school district with about 14 sites and 4000 computers. We image computers for both staff and students. So we will take one site as an example:

School A:

optiplex 745 and 755
latitude d530

this is the layout of most of our elementary schools. however we have two images: 1 for d530 and 1 for the two model desktops. what requires a different image is the site specific software such as the SMARTBOARD software (which means two more images) or PROMETHEAN (two more images). This is the same kind of formula for our middle schools.
our high school has specific software even for labs and there are multiple images for that alone. i would say at the high school there is about 10+ images alone( 1 room for Autocad Suite, 1 image for Maya, etc.) Then take our staff images which are similar to the software on the student machines but different all together.


If using MDT along with WDS is more beneficial than WDS by itself, I am all for trying it out. I guess I would need to figure out how to translate some of our after desktop scripts into that process.

would pushing packages to a base image really save time or just disc space?

1TB seems a massive amount of space, have you looked at using MDT? With this you can have a single image for each OS you require and make any changes using a task sequence.

What operating systems are you deploying?
How many different types of hardware?
Are you deploying software within the image?

If you want to deploy either Windows 7 or XP it is fairly easy to set up basic task sequences to perform the installation and then let group policy take over for the software deployment. If you are using the same software in most of your images you can import it into MDT and set any silent install switches as required, these applications can then be installed during the installation of the OS. Similarly with hardware, if you have large amounts of the same model then you only need to import the drivers once and the installation will pick the correct ones and inject as build time.

If you want more information there are plenty of people on here who have got MDT running nicely who will be more than happy to advise you. If you can give some more info on the background of what kind of setup you have then you could have a test system up and running in a short amount of time.

I know this doesn't answer your original question on hardware but in the schools we support we run MDT on the server in school which has to do everything (DHCP,DNS,AD,File & Print server etc) and even when imaging up to 40 machines at a time there is no noticable effect on the servers.
Generally all servers we have put in in the last year will have been Dell T610's with between 8-12Gb ram and teamed Intel gig networking.

[deano]

You could use MDT to push applications with the image install if you need to but a bit time consuming, so this approach is great if time is not a necessity. For me, time is a necessity so we just update our images with new packages and re-capture ready for deployment.

I understand what you are saying with the multiple versions of apps in different schools but the largest image instal I have is 13gb, and that includes all the basics plus full Adobe Master Collection. If you can get away with it, push out some of the apps with GPO or SCCM