Rozzer Posted September 18, 2006 Posted September 18, 2006 Hi Folks, Well after my concerns a while back they are no longer there. I thought it would be a good idea to tell you the story of how well the intel macs are running in the school i work in. plus how i managed to do it. First we had many problems trying to deploy windows. We wanted to make it as easy as possible and not having a mac server as it was delayed did not help. So this is how we managed to image 62 i macs with mac osx and windows xp. First we setup mac osx with the basic image which is install on the mac osx and set it to work with remote desktop (real life saver). Once all the macs were setup with remote desktop we then used remote desktop to roll out A. bootcamp B. Net restore C. NTFS utility for net restore. D. Firmware lock Once all software was installed with just 2 remote desktop tasks we were almost ready. We then set remote desktop to run bootcamp and then run a apple script which did all the key strokes to set a half and half drive setup. Once it had setup the bootcamp partition we then had to format the drive to NTFS to be readable by net restore. This part was a little painful but we managed to do it. We managed to get 30 windows XP cds and put it in each mac and then set of bootcamp to install. We then did a quick format of the C: drive on the windows xp setup and once it started to copy files then reset the machine back into mac osx. Once all the machines had a NTFS formated bootcamp drive we could then deploy our image with net restore. We first tried using a mac as a server to share the image but because the machine could not handle the load and it was not multi casted it ended up being quite hard. So we simply deployed the win.ntfs file to all the machines desktop. Amazing a 5 gig image was transfered in 15 minutes. Once this was done we then set remote desktop to open net restore. Because i configured net restore before deploying it there was already a config ready to point to the desktops win.ntfs. Because net restore has a look i was unable to use the apple script key stroke coding to do the job for me so all we did was run around all machines and simply unlock net restore and cllick go. So after all the horror i was quite impresss at how that went. The company we bought the macs from said the only way they knew was by using a external drive. Which i did not fancy doing as it would take forever. For the image We have just recieved our server so i will be deploying mac OSX properly that way. I have also found out how to disable the internal speaks which is handy aswell. We have had excellent reports from students and staff at how impressed they are with the macs. Because we only just recieved out server we have not allowed anyone on mac osx. But because of the power of mac osx tiger server it should take no time to fix that. Well hope this can help you in the future if you decide to go for the bootcamp way. Peace out! Ross
Roberto Posted September 19, 2006 Posted September 19, 2006 Well hope this can help you in the future if you decide to go for the bootcamp way. Peace out! Ross That's pretty cool Ross.
GrumbleDook Posted September 19, 2006 Posted September 19, 2006 Hi Folks, Well hope this can help you in the future if you decide to go for the bootcamp way. Peace out! Ross Absolutely fantastic ... I've sent this over to a few ASEs to see what they think ...
Rozzer Posted September 19, 2006 Author Posted September 19, 2006 Glad it has been helpful I just remember there not being much information on bootcamping a lot of machines so thought it would be helpful for people like me Ross
HodgeHi Posted October 12, 2006 Posted October 12, 2006 A wiki might be useful with all applescripts used made available for all none-programming peeps. maybe with screendumps??? It helps with any problems you may have run into along the way (although it doesn't sound like you had many:-) )
bossman Posted October 12, 2006 Posted October 12, 2006 Ross2k5, well done that man. How long did it take altogether from start to finish?
Rozzer Posted October 12, 2006 Author Posted October 12, 2006 Well i would say to do both rooms once they were put on the table and wired up. Umm 1week. The only reason it took so long because we did not have our mac server at the time. if we had the mac server i am sure it would of been quicker. Ross
webman Posted October 12, 2006 Posted October 12, 2006 Personally, I'd say the easiest option outright is to just use PCs instead of macs in the first place
Rozzer Posted October 12, 2006 Author Posted October 12, 2006 lol i said the exact same thing when they were planning on getting the macs.
HodgeHi Posted October 12, 2006 Posted October 12, 2006 But how have they been welcomed? With a cold shoulder or open arms. Now you have been running them for a while. How many serious problems have you encountered? How has os tiger gone down (assuming the server has now arrived and it has been deployed).
kingswood Posted October 13, 2006 Posted October 13, 2006 Cool. This is great information--and very timely ;-)
Rozzer Posted October 13, 2006 Author Posted October 13, 2006 Well we have not used much of Mac osx at the moment as ashton park have recently had a big migration and we are still working around that. We have had a lot of problems with logicboards in the current Imacs we have, because of this we have had to have a recall of the imacs logic boards. But i am relieved to say that is hardware related. I will be going into a bit more detail about this at the confrence. We have not had many software related problems at all. Even with the hardware problems i am still happy to have the Imacs in here. The company we have brought the macs from have said they are happy to get a engineer in and replace all the logic boards on site. So that is very helpful. Ross
Domino Posted October 25, 2006 Posted October 25, 2006 Ross, Just seeen your talk at the edugeek conference. Good Job guys, very cool. I wonder if you could put me in touch with your supplier
bossman Posted October 25, 2006 Posted October 25, 2006 Ross; would like to ask probably a dumb question but what was the reason behind the bootcamp in the first place? and how easy would you think it will be for future developments using Macs and PCs combined on the same network?
GrumbleDook Posted October 25, 2006 Posted October 25, 2006 You should have come to the conference and you would have found out :-)
Rozzer Posted October 25, 2006 Author Posted October 25, 2006 It is very optimistic that they will communicate very well. Ross
HodgeHi Posted March 21, 2007 Posted March 21, 2007 Any chacne of having a copy of or a look at your apple scripts to run the bootcamp setup? I need to do 15 macbooks and then 15 imacs in total so it could be really handy. I would like to see how it was created so i can get a better understanding of how to create them. I am a total newb when it comes to applescript and scripting in general really. hope you can help as there isn't a lot of info around about bootcamp deployment.
torledo Posted October 4, 2007 Posted October 4, 2007 Well i would say to do both rooms once they were put on the table and wired up. Umm 1week. The only reason it took so long because we did not have our mac server at the time. if we had the mac server i am sure it would of been quicker. Ross I think i'll wait for leopard before i try deloying bootcamp
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