Updating images?

[agarabaghi]

What is every ones approach to maintaining images.

 

We run into the issue that computers come in for repairs (we service the laptops we deploy) and more often than not it is faster to back up the users profile and re-image the computer. It becomes time consuming though since the image might be several months old and require a good bit of windows updates to be performed. Currently we use KACE 2000 to capture / create / deploy images over PXE boot. Unfortunately we do not currently have KACE 1000, which to my understanding can push updates to machines. Ideally I would like two things:

 

(1) Pushing updates at a certain time to machines in Labs. Eg: 3am every 4th Wed.

(2) Create an image of a certain machines at the beginning of the year, and then each month simply pushing windows updates and keep the image current.

 

Any suggestions?

[ToyHeartsFan]

I dont maintain the images there are too many of them! The only time I update the images is if there is a driver update that needs to be deployed and I need to reimage a lot of machines for some reason.

 

Our Images contain the OS and the latest drivers that were available when the image was created and any bundled dvd software. All applications are installed via active directory, all updates are taken care of by our WSUS server. A gpupdate /force and a few wuauclt.exe /detectnow commands later and the machines are up and running again. You can usually leave them sat on a bench updating while doing other things.

[agarabaghi]

Yea, Im learning that our AD guy and old Imaging guy did not communicate enough.

 

Im going to check out our deep freeze enterprise system and see why we never used the feature to push updates through the lab. I guess if I used sysprep and an unattend.xml file for creating the machine images, and pointed it to our WSUS server it would do all the windows updates upon each deployment?

[Michael]

If you deploy Windows 7 you can create a single image, Sysprep it and it is imageable (if there's such a word) on any other type of hardware.

 

I only have one image per site and use WSUS to deploy updates to workstations that need it.

 

This in my opinion is a big advantage over the likes of Windows XP, which was more problematic when it came to imaging on different types of hardware.

[agarabaghi]

How do you make a single image that works with all the hardware we have around campus. The lenovos do not play well with Windows 7 drivers. Ive seen utilities like UIU which have all the drivers built in it it... what are you using?

[Michael]

You just run the /generalize option when Sysprepping.

 

If you need to integrate drivers, you can use tools like RT7Lite

[agarabaghi]

Yea I have the sysprep side down. I am pleased with the results of my Unattend.xml, minus some issues with my vbs autodomain script i got from another thread on here.

 

I will check out RT7Lite

[SYNACK]

Look into MDT 2010 or SCCM one image and a driver repository and your good to go. We also use roaming profiles and synced folders on laptops so that a wipe/restore is trivial rather than a hassle.

[Duke5A]

Yea, Im learning that our AD guy and old Imaging guy did not communicate enough.

 

Im going to check out our deep freeze enterprise system and see why we never used the feature to push updates through the lab. I guess if I used sysprep and an unattend.xml file for creating the machine images, and pointed it to our WSUS server it would do all the windows updates upon each deployment?

 

We use Deep Freeze and WSUS in our district and it actually works quite nicely. We setup a scheduled event in Deep Freeze that wakes all the systems at 1am and places them in maintenance mode for an hour, and the machines are set through Group Policy to install updates from the WSUS server during that hour. At the end of the maintenance cycle the machines will reboot frozen and shutdown.

[agarabaghi]

We use Deep Freeze and WSUS in our district and it actually works quite nicely. We setup a scheduled event in Deep Freeze that wakes all the systems at 1am and places them in maintenance mode for an hour, and the machines are set through Group Policy to install updates from the WSUS server during that hour. At the end of the maintenance cycle the machines will reboot frozen and shutdown.

 

Interesting. Ive created my deep freeze client to run maintenance with windows update (it was built in). I have the machines wake up at 10pm (labs close at 9pm) and go into maitenance mode at 1010pm for 1 hour. It seems to work just fine. We have a WSUS server I could use, but I am not in control of it. Do you see any downside to using the built in Windows Update feature in the embedded events tab when creating the installer?

[DaveyPitch]

We have 1 image, set up using WDS and it's own driver store, that we can deploy to all hardware types in the school (currently 5 different types of desktop, plus 3 different kind of laptops). I tend to update the image myself once every few months, ironing out any glitches/problems that were on the old image, updating it fully, then saving it for deployment. It only takes about 30 minutes to completely re-image a machine, from the first button press, to the login screen being available for people to use it. Works great for us

[gshaw]

Windows 7, single image, driver packs... happy techie

 

I'm making this year's image on a VMware virtual machine and once SCCM has done its thing on the capture phase I revert the snapshot I took before starting so I've got the clean image back so I can play with it as and when I need to. Also makes life easy when updating the Windows 7 mandatory profile as that needs a sysprep each time as well.

Edited May 9, 2012 by gshaw

[tommej]

MDT, LTISuspend and snapshotting.

[Duke5A]

Interesting. Ive created my deep freeze client to run maintenance with windows update (it was built in). I have the machines wake up at 10pm (labs close at 9pm) and go into maitenance mode at 1010pm for 1 hour. It seems to work just fine. We have a WSUS server I could use, but I am not in control of it. Do you see any downside to using the built in Windows Update feature in the embedded events tab when creating the installer?

 

DF probably just invokes something like wuauclt.exe /detectnow to install the updates, so it accomplishes the same thing as if the update schedule were configured in GPO. I wouldn't change anything if it works.