tred44 Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 We have a complete existence of 32bit PC's and all Staff & Students have roaming profiles. We are wanting to start introducing 64bit OS's for our Computing & Engineering suites but realise that there is an issue with the roaming profiles being shared between to 2 different architectures. There is no-way of keeping Students that use 64bit PC's away form the 32bit PC's, and due to the number of users, there is no-way of using separate accounts. Please can someone with the experience of migrating from 32bit to 64bit OS's across a school/campus suggest how they approached this and their final solution. Many thanks in advance.
synaesthesia Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 Is there a reason for 32bit machines anywhere? We just went full 64bit as soon as we got rid of XP and haven't looked back. If software REQUIRES 32bit operating systems and won't run on win7/10 x64, then it isn't suitable for use on an educational network. In laymans terms, having 32bit systems is just as bad as having systems that were not "year 2000 compliant".
LeMarchand Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 Is there a reason for 32bit machines anywhere? Old machines that are 32 bit only; allegedly "critical" bits of ancient software that staff can't be bothered to learn a replacement for. So far I have yet *touches wood* had anyone notice missing software on 64 bit machines, but none of my schools have the money to replace all their old hardware. What issues, @tred44 ? Wondering if this might explain some oddities in our lovely new 64 bit suite...
tred44 Posted November 20, 2015 Author Posted November 20, 2015 Thanks for the quick replies. There is no particular reason for 32bit PC's apart form we just haven't started the migration to 64bit yet and were wanting to start testing for Engineering & Computing software. (There may be some historical financial software that may prevent moving some admin pc's but I expect all student PC's to complete the migration at some point.) My problem is that we have over 1700 PC's and Laptops and there is no way these can all be updated at the same time, or across a few weeks, so we will definitely have to co-exist during the migration. (We have over 100 different software packages and applications across multiple sites so even using SCCM it would be a very tall order to expect migration to happen quickly). MS definitely say that sharing the roaming profile between the 2 OS's is not supported but some people have blogged saying they haven't had any particular problems. I'm preparing for worst case and there wanting feedback on what issues people have found and any suggestions?
synaesthesia Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 With all due respect, SCCM makes exactly that task of updating multiple PCs really easy. Honestly with a little testing beforehand and weeding out any crap software (educational software is often the worst however there's very little out there relying on 32bit stuff these days) you could do 1700 machines in a day. You could certainly do it in the downtime before/after Christmas; we've done it! Spend the time doing it properly and you won't therefore be wasting time now fighting fires caused by the mixed environment in the first place.
tred44 Posted November 20, 2015 Author Posted November 20, 2015 With all due respect, SCCM makes exactly that task of updating multiple PCs really easy. . I appreciate the capabilities of SCCM but the powers-that-be will not allow such a rapid migration and expect a least a term of co-existence in a least 1 suite for testing purposes. One option was to deploy Win10/64bit and use the .v5 profile which obviously would have no effect on any Win7 PC but this is ensuring that all software is ready for Win10 and we definitely have some specialist applications that definitely aren't. Thhis may be the way forward and using workarounds for those particular applications but I still want to explore the possibility of Win7 32bit & 64bit co-existence.
synaesthesia Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 Fair enough, but it's the IT team that should be advising the powers that be, and they should be heeding the advice of the person they pay for precisely this reason. It's just making work for yourself, and it's not really a migration, it's just re-imaging stations to a more recent system you're already running. Plenty of people on these forums re-image their entire schools anally and I think a few do it even more often (each to their own! )
fiza Posted November 22, 2015 Posted November 22, 2015 Plenty of people on these forums re-image their entire schools anally and I think a few do it even more often (each to their own! ) Sorry. This made me laugh out loud. Sounds painful.
synaesthesia Posted November 22, 2015 Posted November 22, 2015 eek! Touch of the Freudian there! Of course I meant annually!
Sagima Posted November 23, 2015 Posted November 23, 2015 We have a complete existence of 32bit PC's and all Staff & Students have roaming profiles. We are wanting to start introducing 64bit OS's for our Computing & Engineering suites but realise that there is an issue with the roaming profiles being shared between to 2 different architectures. There is no-way of keeping Students that use 64bit PC's away form the 32bit PC's, and due to the number of users, there is no-way of using separate accounts. Please can someone with the experience of migrating from 32bit to 64bit OS's across a school/campus suggest how they approached this and their final solution. Many thanks in advance. We stopped using roaming profiles
localzuk Posted November 23, 2015 Posted November 23, 2015 That'd be my thought - why do you use Roaming Profiles?
ass17 Posted November 23, 2015 Posted November 23, 2015 That'd be my thought - why do you use Roaming Profiles? You took the words out of my mouth, we have been using mandatory profiles for 10 years, no issues with 32/64 bit machines.
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