[SCCM 2012] Deploying image without visiting machine

[edie209]

I am getting my SCCM environment up and deploying clients and software and things seem to be working quite well. Now thinking ahead I am wondering if it will be possible to re-image suites without visiting the machines, I am sure this must be possible and maybe even schedule a suite to be re-imaged when no one is on site.

[edie209]

I am looking at deploying a required task sequence, has anyone tried this?

[pritchardavid]

Would be quite handy if possible

[edie209]

Would be quite handy if possible

I think I have done it. I will know more in the morning but when I left tonight I had got the ts running the machine had rebooted into winpe and was downloading the wim file so fingers crossed all will be good

[AliG]

I believe you have to deploy the TS as required but be very careful which Device Collection you choose it could go horribly wrong with staff laptops wiped and servers trashed. You could limit your TS to only Windows XP computers to be on the safe side. Also I seem to remeber that when setting it to required dont advertise as PXE boot also otherwise the computers will be sitting on the PXE boot password screen the next morning. I also used maintenance windows to improve required deployments even further which also should use WOL to great effect. I then improved the deployment even further by adding a VB Script that moves the computer account to a Windows 7 Desktop OU.

SCCM 2012 is a beast but getting there step by step

[edie209]

A little update

I have a collection called "Test" with a single machine in ti that I use for testing purposes but you are dead right AliG one wrong move and bye bye infrastructure. I came in this morning and the machine had frozen on the installing Office 2010 part of the install. This being a test machine it is one of a few older machines and as a result I hadn't tested it deploying an image with SCCM it had been install manually, so I have now borrowed a machine I know that works and will come back with the results later.

[Rozzer]

If you make it a required deployment then it will push to the workstation but like said above be very careful which collection you assign it to. So easy to kill your whole network with setting the all systems collection.

You can also schedule required deployments aswell.

Ross

[edie209]

Hi Rozzer I have been getting a TS failure when office 2010 is installing strange because the TS installs fine if I pxe boot. I will et to the bottom of it next week

[Rozzer]

Sounds like the installation has not been added to the distribution point. Does it error before it even starts or when the office install kicks off?

Ross

[twin--turbo]

I am getting my SCCM environment up and deploying clients and software and things seem to be working quite well. Now thinking ahead I am wondering if it will be possible to re-image suites without visiting the machines, I am sure this must be possible and maybe even schedule a suite to be re-imaged when no one is on site.

We used to do this with Zenworks, Just tag a machine or a room to re-image and set a WOL even. The machines would wake up in the middle of the night, Image, apply some updates, re-apply their Name/ID and be ready to go in the morning.

I thing FOG can do something similar too...

One would hope it was a stock feature in imaging solutions now as Zenworks was doing it 7-8 years ago.

Rob

[edie209]

Sounds like the installation has not been added to the distribution point. Does it error before it even starts or when the office install kicks off?

Ross

If I deploy this TS with a PXE boot it works everytime, its only when I deploy the TS as required and it seems office is about 3/4 installed before it fails. Still I will look again tomorrow and see if I have missed anything.

[gshaw]

Works a treat for us with SCCM 2007, I do my advertisements by room and leave them to it

Had to do it via PXE this year though due to changing from IDE to AHCI which needs manual intervention.

[edie209]

Came in this morning and I think it has worked, so I have decided to rerun the TS I set it to run at 9:30 and here we are nearly 10:30 and it still has not run any ideas how to make it run quicker?

[gshaw]

Came in this morning and I think it has worked, so I have decided to rerun the TS I set it to run at 9:30 and here we are nearly 10:30 and it still has not run any ideas how to make it run quicker?

Check the settings for SCCM clients for how often they look for policy updates...

Pushing out application packages with SCCM 2007 quickly - Server Fault

Lower it to 5 minutes or so then they'll check for new advertisements more often. Alternatively on each client open up the control panel applet and from actions run "machine policy and evaluation cycle"

[AliG]

regarding office failing, I had to increase the SCCM cache folder size to approx 7GB becuase I was deploying the image - CS5 - Adobe Pro and office the cache size can be set in the sccm client parameters in the TS