Imaging Approach?

[Gongalong]

Hi folks,

 

Curious to know how others approach imaging.

 

My plan is to reimage machines in the Summer hols, to start with fresh machines at the start of each year. My plan had been to do this via the CM client - just turn on the PC and then send the image to the client - although that isn't working for the moment, probably due to historic issues with partitions and BIOS/UEFI. I'm debating whether just to switch the BIOS over to UEFI this year and set PXE to boot first, so next year I can just deploy to PXE and turn on the PC.

 

Do other do this, is there a better approach, or is it horses for courses?

 

Thanks

[Steve21]

It's much of a muchness really, personally I disabled the CM route as I didn't want anyone to have the ability to accidently push rebuilds So lock it down to the standard pxe routes, obviously means a bit of legwork when you want it done, but generally it's a once a year thing as you said anyway.

 

You can link up UEFI swaps via bios tools for most standard brands into a task sequence too to automate the method of changing it over if you wanted, makes life easier too

 

Steve

[sparkeh]

As above, I to use PXE and walk round. I like to know that its kicked off and running. Also I know that you have to use pxe and enter a password to image the machine so reduces risk of accidentally wiping the estate

 

(though if we had significantly more devices I would rethink this approach!)

[bald_pig]

We use sccm here, you can kick off the reimage from windows, start an entire room at a time with no fuss!

[Gongalong]

We use sccm here, you can kick off the reimage from windows, start an entire room at a time with no fuss!

Ah yes, I should have been clear that we're already using SCCM.

[ThatBoringBloke]

I manually PXE boot the machines. This way I can also check that they have working keyboards and mice attached.