Software and management and deployment

[howartp]

Hi,

 

We are currently RM CC4 but looking at absconding to vanilla MS.

 

I was assuming SCCM 2012 would be the way to go, so that everything is using pure vanilla, but having played with it on some test servers it looks bigger, messier and more prone to getting lost in than CC4. (Not the console, but the whole CC4 backend if something doesn't work - the CC4 console on SCCM would be great)

 

Prior to SCCM I got WDS set up which was just so simple for OS deployment. Some apps will be built into the images, but we still need a way of managing application deployment. I know GP can do it, but I wondered if there's some other solutions that people use that I should be looking at?

 

Also does anyone use alternatives for user management (password reset, profile reset, name changes)? I know AD does passwords and names, but it doesn't do profile reset.

 

Any ideas welcomed.

 

Peter

[Roberto]

We use AD Manager Plus for user management. We also use SCCM - it is a beast of a product, but you only need to use the bits you need to use, and we're managing 1500 machines with a lot of different software deployment patterns so its a bit complex for GPOs - YMMV of course.

 

We don't bother with "profile reset". In our experience, that's a RM generated solution to a RM generated problem and isn't needed on a vanilla network.