Depoying Win 7 out on MASS. How are others doing it?

[ranj]

Hi

 

We currently deploy Windows 7 using an unattend.xml and the mechanism is using WDS on a 2008 r2 server. We currently have deployed it to about 10% of our machines.

 

The next big one will be to deploy on mass to 170 machines over a weekend. In preparation to this I have a few questions. currently we use WDS to rollout the 7 image and it works very well on a small scale.

 

We have a number of different machines comprising of laptops and desktops, I am finding that all the correct drivers are not being picked up once the image has been loaded onto the client. An example is the graphics card is not working on 1 particular machine unless I manually install this using the CD after it has loaded win7. I am aware that using WDS I can integrate all of our drivers for all builds of machines (e.g. NIC card, graphics, sound drivers etc) and WDS will decide which driver goes for which build. I would like to do this but am struggling to get it working.

 

I was wondering if others had similar issues like mine? Are there any weblinks for documentation which will allow me to do this?

 

I am also looking at installing System Center R3 for us to do zero touch deployment of Windows 7 with the ability to schedule the installation of Windows 7 over a weekend. We will be overseeing this but it would be great if we could leave it running overnight and come in the next day to do checks and fill in computer names etc.

 

I would like to do this in a way that involves less intervention from us on the client end if possible. Currently using the unattend.xml we only need to enter a computer name.

 

I plan to also install System Center on the same server as our WDS and MDT server which is 2008 R2 in a VMware cluster. Is this ideal or would I be better using a separate server just for sccm? I can create another server if this is necessary but thought I would ask for a second opinion.

 

I am also been reading and am aware I will need to do some schema changes to the AD infrastructure. If anyone has guidance or web links on how best to do this that would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

Our plan is to rollout Windows 7 to 170 machines over a weekend. I am interested in also know how much load this would be on the WDS/MDT server. We have setup WDS with multicasting in mind. Has anyone tried rolling out Windows 7 on lots of machines all at once. Does Multicasting manage the process successfully, reason I ask is it is my intention to install windows 7 on as many machines around the building, leave the process going overnight and come back the next day to check on progress, hoping that all machines have the correct WDS image and is ready to roll.

 

Any advice on all/some of these questions would be most appreciated.

 

Thanks

[plexer]

You mention mdt as well as wds but it doesn't sound like you are leveraging mdts functionality.

[glennda]

For the mass roll out have you considered fog? You can set it all up to image the machines then sit around drinking coffee :-)

[strawberry]

zero touch may not be the way to go, if you use mdt and lite touch it allows you to manually enter and select differences for the computer, This can be things like which programs are isntalled and the name of the pc. It can also do things like run scripts at your command so if you use enviromental variables or similar that can be done automatically.

[sted]

and zero touch requires sccvm which costs money.

 

MDT is fine but personally i tend to use that to create an image then sysprep it and fire it to other pcs with wds

[glennda]

Well once its setup you have it set so that all the machines are in groups similar to how you have it in ad so machines in room a (which is say a maths room) so it gets image a which has all the right software. You can do pretty much everything and more with fog then you can with mdt/wds so its not completely zero touch but its 99% and so so much easier/ better then wds/mdt IMHO

[rh91uk]

We do ours using SCCM with MDT after moving from FOG, has saved us bags of time (oh, and DELL release packs for SCCM too..!)

[SYNACK]

Use MDT, the multicasting works great as long as you don't have any really junk network cards, you can set it to split them into three different speed batches. Some intel cards are really junk at multicasting due to their pathetic drivers and will drop a trasfer down to a couple of hundred kbs a second, most are fine though and will blast through the transfer in much less time than the unicst transfer would take.