[WDS] Recommendations please for school imaging ...

[jamesfed]

Use a clean, base image, that way you'll always have a base to go to.

We use SCCM, so we have clean images, but then we have the software that deploys as well.

Out of intrest how long does it take you to get the software onto the machines after the image is on there?

[gpe5732]

Out of intrest how long does it take you to get the software onto the machines after the image is on there?

I tell you what, it's been so long since I've been out in the field. I just asked one of our field engineers and he told me he thinks it takes about 30 minutes. That's booting into SCCM, selecting your image (we're down to 2 images that cover every system in the district), renaming the computer with a pop-up prompt, downloads the image, applies the image, then runs through the task sequence of installing some of our main items like Office 2010, Chrome, VLC, Sophos, etc. Then it joins the computer to the domain.

When I was in the field, we were just getting this stood up. We had used Ghost before hand. This was pretty much the greatest thing since sliced bread (not sure if that's just an American saying). We could basically walk through a lab, boot up, hit F12, pick an image, and walk away. Come back whenever and the computers would have reimaged themselves and would be sitting on the login screen ready to go. Very handy.

I'm more on the server side these days, so I still deal with SCCM, but mostly just the maintenance of the boxes it's housed on.

[jamesfed]

Oh no we have sliced bread here as well

Ahh so a pretty light image - I'm just intrested as to how other schools get on with time to install loads of programs (I remember being at a RM school and it took agggess).

[gpe5732]

Yeah, our images are pretty base, and they include huge driver repositories so we can support the hundreds of different models we have. I'm actually quite impressed with the work the guys have done with it. When we first started, we had an image for most of our major models, still better than Ghost, but nowhere near as streamlined as they've gotten it today.

It's super fast. It's also super efficient. It may take 30 minutes, but it takes them all of 1 minute to get it started, so you can start entire buildings and walk away.

[gshaw]

About 30-45 minutes here with 100Mb rather than Gigabit connections. SCCM does it all for you and if the client is already on the machine no manual intervention required just advertise from the time you want deployment to begin and enjoy

[glennda]

I'm a Fog person - we have around 30Gb image which has all the software installed and drivers for all our models (or variants of stone desktops). Takes about 40 mins to fog a machines and it can be done remotely without even going to the machine

[jamesfed]

2.99GB later the video (MDT and App-V) is ready to upload

I'm afraid I might be here all night if I do it on my home connection so will upload tomorrow at work.

[garethedmondson]

We use MDT2012 here. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit

I wasn't happy managing images all the time, so now, we push out the WIM off the DVD and choose the software we want on machines at deployment time - if we want anything post-deployment, we'll roll it out over Group Policy or use Impero to push it out and check it into MDT for future deployments.

It's an amazing, tiny little tool that will also deal with backing up and restoring user data for you as well.

Same here. This is what we do. Although CS3 goes into the image and so will that bloatware called Sibelius 7. New images are made once a year in July.

Gareth

[garethedmondson]

Out of intrest how long does it take you to get the software onto the machines after the image is on there?

I would love to look at SCCM but the LEA told us that we couldn't as there could only be one SCCM server on the domain. We use an LEA wide domain and have delegated access to our OU only.

Seems SCCM 2012 might offer a different solution.

Can anyone confirm or deny this for us?

Gareth

[ChrisH]

We have used App-V for some apps for a while, we are now getting round to getting most of them packaged so about 90% of our apps will be APP-V apps. It's quite simple to do and it's even meant I can do away with redirected start menus!

[garethedmondson]

We have used App-V for some apps for a while, we are now getting round to getting most of them packaged so about 90% of our apps will be APP-V apps. It's quite simple to do and it's even meant I can do away with redirected start menus!

hi ChrisH

App-V - can you tell me more about this? Maybe a PM with how it effects your school and workload? What license do you need? We have ESS with Microsoft but does that cover App-V?

We are moving to HyperV in the next six months so this seems like the next thing after that,

regards

Gareth

[jamesfed]

We have used App-V for some apps for a while, we are now getting round to getting most of them packaged so about 90% of our apps will be APP-V apps. It's quite simple to do and it's even meant I can do away with redirected start menus!

We are about there with App-V as well - v5 is looking good as well

Video showing off the basics of it use will be going up onto YouTube (will link here) tomorrow morning.

[jamesfed]

MDT and App-V demo video is online now - Using MDT and App-V to get PCs to users fast! | my world of IT

There is a short intro about the whole process but if you skip ahead to about 4:15 the hands on demo is there.

[JBoyd]

I didn't know Impero could do this, or are you remoting in to each computer to install?

[DaveP]

We are using WDS. Our base image is "clean" and we have deployed almost all software via Group Policy or start up scripts. There are a few bits of software we have had to install by hand at the station but we are working on mopping these up also.