Deployment methods going forward

[Olliedawg]

We currently do not have any form of mass deployment ( apart from a sysprepped windows 10 with office preinstalled ) that is applied via CloneZilla.

 

Looking to streamline this more, also due to the fact that we are planning a room refresh later this year of 34 PC's, really dont want to be imaging these one at a time - what method do you recommend going forward?

 

I was looking at either WDS or MDT (have never used either before, so would be learning as I go). I have also heard that SCCM is very good, although complex at first to get into?

 

Just a bit of background -

 

Small ish secondary school (550 students)

around 120 student desktops

around 100 staff desktops

around 50 staff laptops

around 40 student laptops

[Davit2005]

Stick with WDS/MDT. In that scenario. It will be easier than managing SCCM. Ok you do get the management, reporting and better software options with SCCM though.

[fiza]

This is a good starting point if you have never used MDT/WDS before.

 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/deploy-windows-mdt/prepare-for-windows-deployment-with-mdt

[localzuk]

Do you have any plans to "cloudify"? Ie. moving to Intune etc.? If so, I'd say look at the deployment process in that.

 

Else, it depends what you want to achieve.

 

If you already have all your software installation processes automated somehow, a simple WDS will do fine.

 

Else, if your software is also installed manually, I'd suggest going full Config Manager tbh, that way you can automate imaging and software deployment.

 

But realistically, at this point, the "modern" way forward is the Intune way.

[BKGarry]

As someone that switched from Sysprep'd images to MDT, it is amazing, Deploy OS, boot, deploys applications etc.

 

For your size, I can see MDT being a good solution, you will have minimal touch to put in some details rather than the Zero Touch you can have with SCCM but it will be much easier than clonezilla and sysprep.

[Davit2005]

It is quite easy, honestly.

 

Few things to note not obvious or would be better to do in my opinion:

 

I'd install on a member server rather than a server running DHCP or a Domain Controller. If you do this you should not have to make any changes to DHCP options on the DHCP server

If you need to change IP address of the MDT server you might need to re-move and re-install WDS (make backup copies of boot images beforehand)

If you use vlans make sure you add the WDS server as an IP address helper.

Configure a privileged service account for joining the PCs to the domain as part of the deployment process rather than using a domain admin account, this can be done by creating an OU, setting up MDT to put the computer in the OU as part of the join process and giving the service account enough permissions to create the computer account in that OU.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Davit2005

[mavhc]

Use winget to install and update software

[BKGarry]

Use winget to install and update software

 

Wow, that is an amazing reply, ignoring the fact about deploying the OS and any proprietary programs which are not free and available on Winget. Thank you

[mavhc]

That's ok, but I wasn't responding to you. Does each reply have to answer the entire question now? Didn't read that update

 

If you want to use winget for your own software you can add your own source repo https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/winget/source

[PotNoodleTech]

WDS and MDT are really easy to set up and really easy to use and scale to building thousands of PCs.

 

I would stick with this idea watch a few youtube videos and they create a windows server install those roles and go for it!

[MYK-IT]

@Olliedawg

 

As I mentioned within another post yesterday (http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-11/232056-wds-unsupported.html#post1989083) there is a free, live online mini-course from 2pm today.

 

When I setup WDS/MDT years ago, I used the Deployment Fundamentals books (https://www.deploymentresearch.com/books/) where a lot of which are now part of the Microsoft Learn resources previously mentioned etc.

[craigcamacho]

It depends on a number of factors really such as budgets, current infrastructure and also confidence in your own abilities. I would always suggest SCCM if you are fully on-prem because its an absolutely amazing product but it can be quite pricy from a licensing point of view and some people just don't have it in their budgets. I don't even think its that difficult to setup and manage anymore but I've been doing it for about 13 years so my opinion on that is probably fairly skewed. There are plenty of guides out there on the internet that can talk you through setting up a basic standalone primary site with management, distribution and software update point roles. MDT is a free alternative you use for image deployment which tbh I have never had to have much dealings with and only ever set it up once many years go so cant really give much advice on that but I know its a decent tool. I would personally stay away from WDS (although SCCM works on top of it) as its a fairly old school way of doing it and there are free alternatives now such as MDT so why would you use WDS on its own?

 

Whether you use SCCM or MDT I would always suggest staying away from baking software in and creating fat images and stick with a thin image even if its the vanilla install.wim from the sources folder on the OS installer media. Find a way of bolting your software on after the image is laid on the drive such as during a task sequence or other typical app deployment methods. When you need to update any of your apps its much easier packaging the new app and adding to a task sequence or deploying it than having to rebuild your entire image. A good way of creating images is using something like WimWitch or OSDBuilder. With these you can take the vanilla image and make changes such as removing built in windows apps, injecting updates and much more. They are both brilliant tools!

 

I would love to suggest Autopilot and Intune as well but I know these aren't the easiest to implement in a school environment and get working with other services within school such as MIS, printing and any other on-prem roles especially in the time frames your thinking of.

[Olliedawg]

Thank you all. Going to look at MDT - cant really afford SCCM in our budget & MDT seems the better fit anyways

[PotNoodleTech]

WDS on it's own is VERY limited but it serves as a PXE boot point for images generated from MDT. If your running MDT i believe you need WDS too (at least I always have run both!!)