RM cloning woes

[andyturpie]

Hi Gang,

 

Our school has a lot of matching RM ones and mobiles which I have tried many ways to get one of the machines just to how they should be and then clone the hard drive to the others. The problem I have is even though we add the machine names to active directory, it just will not work. I have tried the name machine program in the RM/Install folder as well as the set domain.

 

i.e old machine would be Watford-RM/Lynnes PC, when cloned and tried to rename the PC to Andrews PC then shows the name Andrews PC/Lynnes PC which then locks you out of any login you try and a full rebuild is then needed. Is there a sure fire way around this that could save a lot of time.

 

PS if this is in the wrong area Mods, accept my appologies.

I am also open to any ideas or suggestions regarding cloning/restoring RM machines rather than do a full metal restore of every single machine and then clone each individual (around 600)..

 

I look forward to thoughts comments, debates etc

 

Andrew Turpie at Watford Grammar School For Girls

[sparkeh]

First up, are you attempting this on CC3/4?

[CHR1S]

You cant rename a PC under CC4 while its on the domain (Not 100% on CC3). You can either clone to full installed XP/vista, rename, then use the RM tool which I cant remember the name of to finish the process and add the CC4 bits or full rebuild only.

 

Rubbish isnt it

[sparkeh]

You cant rename a PC under CC4 while its on the domain (Not 100% on CC3)

 

No not with CC3 either, thats why I asked

 

I think you are refering to cloning them then running smartclient.

 

Personally I can't see the need for cloning. What can't you set up from the RMMC?

[andyturpie]

Hi guys sorry forgot to let you know its CC3. My main goal is to build one machine, get all the updates and packages downloaded and installed take an image of it and blast it onto identical machines by somehow forcing a change of name for it to be accepted on the network.

 

My networking skills aren't that great and have little experience with AD etc so its all a wee bit confusing lol

 

Cheers,

 

Andy T

[dalsoth]

CC3 does not allow the renaming of computers once built. We tend to image our laptops and non RM machines to XP then run smartclient for the RM bit afterwards. This does not then work with RM restore.

 

On the RM Ones we will just build them on RM from the start and roll out a command to create the restore images for each machine.

 

You might want to call up RM support for some advice if you have a support contract. They will be able to tell you specifically if the RM bits will knacker what you are trying to do. I would not bother trying to ghost any machines once on RM as it seems doomed to fail. It's either the RM way using their own imaging and restoring software or the Vanilla way maybe.

[andyturpie]

I was just looking for a quick disaster recovery procedure, hate having to faff with driver disks have a machine restart umpteen times and have a machine down for a couple of hours just for the sake of around 6gb of data. My plan was to build one machine from each department just how it should be and clone it to the others when needed. I have just "trialled" spotmau bootcare and with out compression can clone a 6gb image in 7 mins from external hdd. Less downtime, less faff.

 

Regards,

 

Andy

[dalsoth]

Hi guys sorry forgot to let you know its CC3. My main goal is to build one machine, get all the updates and packages downloaded and installed take an image of it and blast it onto identical machines by somehow forcing a change of name for it to be accepted on the network.

 

My networking skills aren't that great and have little experience with AD etc so its all a wee bit confusing lol

 

Cheers,

 

Andy T

 

Once you start a build or restore it will pick up all of the software and updates required from the location in the RM management console and automatically deploy them to the stations. Yeh it's not as fast perhaps as a clone job with it all included but once its all set how you like it you could then use RM restore to take a snapshot of each machine and a restore would take 10-15 mins maybe.

 

Any future updates would just install automatically again after a restore and at some point you could just schedule another restore image to be created.

 

The only reason i am making things hard for myself by using a slipstreamed CD for certain laptops and then smartclient is because i have not had the time to get all of our laptop drivers on RM to build straight off a USB stick.

[sparkeh]

I actually think it will be more effort to go down the cloning route.

You can do a lot of configuring of the machines from the RMMC (packages, security, reg frags to set a multitude of things). Then use restore images as your DR which you can update every so often when you have the time.

[Batman]

I can't help but I feel your pain.

 

We too hate the RM build process. I had a little mishap and named a teacher's machine "mrpoo" last week when I built it... if only we could just rename it