SCCM 2012 Advice

[synaesthesia]

** NOTE 1 : SCCM 2012 HAS BEEN RELEASED**

 

Hi folks, we're quite a way into testing with SCCM 2012 and we're very happy

 

There's a few little foibles though I'd like to sort or run past other people to see how they're doing things/thinking about doing things, if you'd be so kind

 

Rough setup I am thinking is a collection per location set via a query in membership rules (although initially will be by MAC import). Software can then be rolled out per location, monitoring, reporting etc. When a station needs rebuilding or adding to a location, it gets added to both it's locational collection as per above, and a deployment collection for the relevant image it needs. Images will be thin (jus Windows) fat curriculum (add office, VNC, solidworks, other important global software) and fat admin (SIMS, office etc).

 

The questions that have arisen:

 

1. Is it possible to make the PXE boot with no interaction, for instance a remote rebuilt/deployment? Easy enough to remove the requirement for a password on PXE boot but it still asks for F12 to be pressed to allow for it to continue.

2. What would people's methods be to deploy software to single computers rather than a collection? Good example is classroom/whiteboard computers, they'd be in the same location but one classroom might need something installed the others do not.

3. Deploying to an AD location: In a task sequence it's easy to specify where you'd like to add a machine to, domain, OU etc - it's wonderfully powerful. The question is, would I need a separate task sequence per location in AD, or is there some fantastic variable/script I can use to query where the machine will be building to and it adds it thus?

 

4. This is probably the one I'd like to have nailed first. Build and capture of a base image is probably where I'd like to add in the fat applications as per above; when the software is part of the image it'll take a fair amount of strain off things when it comes to both mass deployment and day to day running. Plus it saves having to worry about why packages unexplicably start to fail (casts an evil eye in the RM direction). From what I understand (and have succesfully done for a few programs) you'd just specify the packages/applications you wish to install in the task sequence for build & capture; this works very well, however there are going to be some MASSIVE PITAs here (COUGHsolidworksCOUGH) where I would much prefer to be able to do a simple, manual install. Is it possible to do this before the capture takes place without upsetting the capture process (worried about keeping it hardware agnostic ala sysprep)

 

Cheers

Edited April 2, 2012 by synaesthesia