Fog Vs Ghost Vs MDT

[RabbieBurns]

We currently use Ghost for mass re-imaging. Its a PITA getting the bootable USB for them, and we havent managed to get PXE working. Also, the licensing costs us a fair bit too.

 

So Im investigating other options. FOG is talked a lot about on here - is it used widely simply because its free? Or is it easy / good / low maintenance?

 

We are a MS house so fully licensed for anything, should we look at MDT then rather than FOG because we are licensed for it?

 

Basically looking for whatever solution will be the easiest to maintain, the easiest for my techs to use, and ideally if I can save some money without paying for ghost.

 

Or, should we just stick with ghost and try to figure out its problems.

[Sam_Brown]

Don't know anything about FOG but we use WDS here and will be moving to MDT whenever I get the time to sort it out.

 

The reason I like the look of MDT so much is that you don't have to create multiple images for multiple machines. We have about 5 or 6 different models of computers here each with different hardware. Under ghost we used to have multiple images due to different drivers \ software requirements which was a pain in the arse to maintain.

 

With MDT you don't really need a base image and instead rely on task sequencing. You keep all your applications \ OS \ drivers in a library on the server and create a task sequence which is essentially something that you say "Right I want this OS, these drivers and these apps installed when this computer connects".

 

If we wanted to say stick in the most recent version of flash player on Ghost images we had to deploy the image, update the flash player and capture it again multiple times depending on how many images you have. With MDT you simple add it to the "library" change the task sequences quickly and then it's ready to go in just a few moments as opposed to the hours it would take to update 7 or 8 ghost images.

[morganw]

FOG is flat imaging, MDT is task sequence based (as described above). As part of a task sequence you can deploy a flat image if you wanted to use the traditional image building methods. MDT task sequences should be lower maintenance and more flexible across different hardware due to the methods of driver injection. MDT can't do remote rebuilds (for this you need SCCM) like FOG can, and FOG has printer management, hardware inventory, and it's own (albeit less flexible) software installation system.

[RabbieBurns]

what is a Remote build? You mean like on a seperate subnet or over a VPN or something?

 

MDT looks very good. Is there any introductory documentation / how-to guides for a total noob?

[morganw]

By remote rebuild I mean you can PXE boot the workstation to image it without being in the room. This is what SCCM calls "zero touch", whereas what you do can do with MDT is "lite touch". There are some people trying it with MDT though, see here.

 

This will show you everything you need to Windows 7 deployment on MDT2010.