edie209 Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 I would like to have my PC's re-imaged on a schedule , lets say every 6 weeks. I have created a collection to test this and I can get the PC's to re-image, but they continue to image again and again. I have obviously got the settings wrong in the scheduling tab. At present I have the "Assignment Schedule" set to run daily at 14:00 and the "Run Behaviour" set to Never rerun deployed program (I will change this once I know it works) I have set the Maintenance window for the collection to 12:00 - 15:00 to occur every 1 day during testing Has anyone achieved what I am trying to do and if so how did you do it?
halbaradkenafin Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 I would like to have my PC's re-imaged on a schedule , lets say every 6 weeks. The first question is why do you want to do this?
localzuk Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 The first question is why do you want to do this? My thoughts too. I re-image once a year at most, unless there is a major issue with a deployed image. I can't imagine a scenario where 6 weekly reimages are needed!
edie209 Posted October 15, 2015 Author Posted October 15, 2015 Not the question I am asking though. I want to automate imaging
localzuk Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 We're asking why. It may give an alternative.
psydii Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 I've got agree. I go one step further. A well built and managed desktop fleet only requires re-imaging when you want to change something really fundamental or huge, like OS version, Office version or Creative Cloud Version. That said hardware constraints (too small SSD) or poor anti-malware protection might also be a reason. My thinking behind this is management of applications and setting is quick and easy, rolling a new image and fully testing it takes weeks. I would rather my team were making continuous improvement, not big changes. It is better for their day to day skills and thus has a knock on positive effect on all their activities. We needs be able to push updates immediately not wait six weeks (see recent flash mess, and the w7/8/10 hotfix lists) to resolve issues. When a patch is ready from the vendor, why wait? *subject to reasonable testing to a sample set of machines.
sted Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 That said hardware constraints (too small SSD) or poor anti-malware protection might also be a reason. imaging every 6 weeks to an ssd has to be bad for its lifespan just the sheer amounts of writes by doing this will presumably considerably reduce their lifespan
edie209 Posted October 15, 2015 Author Posted October 15, 2015 Having a small team wondering the site for imaging loses me quite a lot of time in effective man hours. Having the ability to refresh automatically saves on that time and would also allow it to be done at evenings and weekends. That would free up time to dedicate to other jobs. My team has shrunk in recent times due to budgets.
psydii Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 @edie209 sorry not what you were asking. Didn't see your reply till after I posted. For many of us around here, asking the 'five whys' is a habit evolved to find better solutions. A lot of people can find themselves stuck in a mindset evolved from 1990's desktop management, that these days impedes the delivery of IT services that the iPad and Chrome has led people to expect.
edie209 Posted October 15, 2015 Author Posted October 15, 2015 SSD drives don't make me laugh you need money for that. Anyway I ain't looking for a discussion on the the reasons I am looking for an answer to the initial question.
halbaradkenafin Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 Depending on what you are currently using for your deployments it should be possible. If you've got SCCM set up then you can probably write a short Powershell script to create a deployment for an existing task sequence and advertise it to all your machines (and then reboot those machines so that they rebuild), set up a scheduled task to run the script however often you want and then another a few hours later to run a script to disable that deployment. If you've got MDT or WDS then you'll probably have to do something more complicated.
psydii Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 Again sorry, I shouldn't rush to reply , I sounded judgemental and critical of your approach, I was projecting a mindset I have run headlong into recently onto you, and it was unjust. I am pretty sure you can schedule a re-image of machines automatically. But even if it can't be done, it shouldn't be too hard to kick it off on a Friday night from the console every six weeks.
edie209 Posted October 15, 2015 Author Posted October 15, 2015 Not a problem psydii, I have been trying to schedule and it works but just won't stop. which is really frustrating. I know it must be something to do with the run behaviour but I just can't figure what.
halbaradkenafin Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 What are you currently using to deploy the OS images?
edie209 Posted October 15, 2015 Author Posted October 15, 2015 Sorry I didn't even say that in the original post. SCCM 2012 That would really help a little wouldn't it.
halbaradkenafin Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 Assuming you've got it deployed as Required and set the window for deployment to expire at a certain time (I'd probably put it at about an hour or two after you make it available), and ensure it's set to never rerun. If that works in testing then you could use the SCCM Powershell module to get the settings from the deployment and then write a script which runs once every 6 weeks to create the same deployment details and then delete it a little while later.
localzuk Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 Having a small team wondering the site for imaging loses me quite a lot of time in effective man hours. Having the ability to refresh automatically saves on that time and would also allow it to be done at evenings and weekends. That would free up time to dedicate to other jobs. My team has shrunk in recent times due to budgets. Can you not just re-image machines if they are reported as a problem? I don't see that there's a need for wandering a site or scheduling like that still. I have a small team too, me and 300 devices. If a machine breaks, I add it to a collection and set off an immediate deployment. I then either ask the user to turn the machine off and on again, or I use vPro to restart the PC. It then just boots into PXE and images. Do your PCs have vPro or any ability to ask a reporting user to reboot them?
mrbios Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 So what you want is a Zero touch installation (ZTI)? if you google for that you get quite a bit of info, this is probably one of the most useful links (love this blog!): Henk's blog: Using Zero Touch Installation (ZTI) in ConfigMgr 1
netadmin Posted October 17, 2015 Posted October 17, 2015 (edited) Another option would be to create a collection for the machines you want to have the scheduled reimage for and deploy the mandatory TS to this collection as "always rerun". Then run a scheduled task every 6 weeks to run a PowerShell script to add the necessary PCs to the collection (such as How to add computers listed in a text file to a collection | Mike's Tech Blog). Add a final step in your task sequence to remove the PCs from the collection and it should not keep reimaging at that point (such as Remove computer association from collection after SCCM task sequence | - danovich.com.au). Edited October 17, 2015 by netadmin
edie209 Posted October 20, 2015 Author Posted October 20, 2015 Thanks for the replies I have been so busy I have not had time to revisit, as I am off on holiday tomorrow, but I will look into this when I get back. The last two answers look really promising
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