[sims] Building SIMS into an Image for Deployment - Yes or No?

[soveryapt]

Morning All

 

So I'm busy doing images at the moment, done the main site's worth for this particular school, but just finishing the music one (Sibelius nightmares, but that's another story).

 

Anyway, with the machines for SIMS here, I generally roll out the base image as per the main curriculum, then I set up SIMS manually on the machines.

 

I was just thinking though, if I created an image with all the SIMS stuff set up on it in the first place, would that work when I push it out, or am I best off sticking to the way I do now.

 

Any pointers on that would be great. There's not as many SIMS machines as curriculum ones, so it's not as much of a ball ache to manually do them, but if there is an option to be able to image them, then that would seem to make some great sense to me.

 

Thanks

Andy

[fiza]

We put SIMS on our image. No problems that we know of.

[matt40k]

Personally I wouldn't. Means you'll have to maintain multiple images and doesn't give you enough flexibility. Way I used to do it was a single OS image with drivers then deploy the software via SCCM or whatever.

[soveryapt]

Personally I wouldn't. Means you'll have to maintain multiple images and doesn't give you enough flexibility. Way I used to do it was a single OS image with drivers then deploy the software via SCCM or whatever.

 

No SCCM here, most of their stuff happily deploys via GPO, it's just the odd thing that needs hard installing (like BoardMaker or some of the Music Lab software and CrazyTalk). I tend to build a single image on a VM (using Parallels on my MacBook Pro) and then I clone this and add in the various bits of software. It's a once a year thing, so maintaining images isn't too much hassle.

 

If it's just the maintaining element of it then that doesn't bother me so much, it's if there will be major issues with SIMS if I do that I'm more looking at, but thanks anyway.

[matt40k]

Well I'm a fan of SOLUS3, its very much point and shoot. If you're not using it, then look at the command-line swithes on the installers (see supportnet), you can then just create a batch file that runs on first boot (runonce regkey). Save you making your image that few mb bigger only for it to then update and overwrite the out-of-date files. SIMS updates 3 times a year (not including re-releases, patches etc)

[teejay]

Yep, I'd do it through Solus 3 if I were you, far too many updates in SIMS to be faffing about updating your base image. AFter a few years of pain, Solus 3 really does just work now (I really, really shouldn't say that after the day I've had!).

[sparkeh]

I probably wouldn't put it in an image, with three annual updates, re-releases and patches etc it seems like to much hassle to me.

S3 is the easiest way to manage it.

[soveryapt]

Thanks all, I'll look at the LEA provided scripts and see about using them on first run then (or failing that make my own based on theirs to do it).

 

Andy

[Ghostgame]

Just don't add the SOLUS3 agent as part of your image.

[Chuckster]

I have SIMS installed into my base image, and the base image was created back in Dec '12.

 

SIMS .Net will update when the shortcut is executed from the start menu so it's never been a problem for us.

[synaesthesia]

No, keep the base image as clean as you can. No need with Solus 3 really.

[localzuk]

We just deploy it using SOLUS 3. Works well for us. No need to include it in the base image.

[vikpaw]

Each time we build an image (probably yearly) we put the latest SIMS on it. Then it updates at runtime via SOLUS 2 as required for the rest of time, or until it gets re-imaged.

The only downside being if you re-image a machine due to problems mid-year, then you'd have to run SIMS to make sure it updated itself, but it's no biggie.