What deployment system should I use?

[jmak]

I've just started in a new organisation and I want to implement a deployment platform - everything's being built manually at the minute.

 

I've previously set up MDT/WDS, so I'd be reasonably happy doing that again, but I noticed that features are starting to be deprecated for Windows 11. Is MDT/WDS still the way to go or is it time to learn Intune or autopilot?

Edited March 10, 2022 by jmak

[Oaktech]

I'd be tempted to go MDT as a temporary measure but to plan for intune in the very near future as it seems to be the system most people are moving to.

[Norphy]

I think it depends on various factors, but Intune and Autopilot is definitely something you should be considering. Intune in itself isn't all that brilliant in a lot of ways (Reporting for instance is rubbish) but combined with features of Azure AD Premium like Conditional Access and whatever they're calling Defender ATP these days, it suddenly becomes a lot more interesting

 

If your workplace has a lot of remote workers then Intune and Autopilot make a lot of sense as all the infrastructure you need is in the cloud and you don't need to do anything to set it up. With Autopilot, you can get the OEM to pre-provision the device as an Autopilot laptop, ship it off to the user with instructions to sign into it with their Office 365 account and they'll get their computer set up automatically. However, if all of your workers are based on-site, and/or you don't have much internet bandwidth then something with local infrastructure might be more logical, even if it's just WDS pushing out a fat image.

[jmak]

Thanks. I think I'll dust off the notes I made last time and do something basic in MDT.

 

I'm convinced we need to move to Intune as loads (most?) devices are non-domain, so loads of advantages for device management as well as deployment. That's above my pay grade though.