SHimmer45

gaming is fine for what i play. the HDD are only a couple of 300GB seagate 7200.9 in R0

CPU isnt that high with a DC and exchange running and allocating 2GB for the DC and 3GB for Exchange its using 60-70 including the Host OS (i am currently using virtual box on win 7 and i think it allocates the ram regardless of it being used)

slightly aging but reliable phenom 2 x4 which i use for gaming through to playing with virtual things. Phenom 2 X4 2.8Ghz 8GB RAM 2x 300GB SATA HDD (RAID 0) HD6800 looking to add either more ram or better HDD to it but cant make up my mind between going to 16GB RAM or putting another SSD in there (or 2x smaller ssd in raid can work out similar to a more expensive larger ssd) when i do fire up some virtual machines for a lab its only a couple of DC's (however when i was playing with exchange it was painfully slow) a client and a firewall

i have a buffalo linkstation at home and even in RAID0 the performance isnt brilliant. if youre after "proper" performance for streaming/copying etc either brew your own nas or just a different NAS from someone like QNAP. i will be rolling my own nas when i out grow my linkstation with a low power celeron or something similar on a board with a good SATA controller or perhaps i PCI-e card depending on how many drives i end up using.

seperate graphics card with two HDMI outputs, im sure AMD/NVIDIA support this

this is how i have done it Install your OS onto a "system" (virtual or physical, the 1st MDT images i made were on an actual computer) update & install software you need along with any locally applied GPO / tweaks. Make sure you are working in the Administrator account (important later for creating of the default profile which you can do manually or as part of your deployment task sequence) once your happy with image locate the scripts folder on your MDT server run litetouch.wsf run this and select the "capture image task sequence" (if you havent you will need to create one) after image has been captured i then mount it using imageX to properly trim the junk left from installers etc. deployed image task squence creates my default profile and a few other odds and ends (local group memberships etc)

it will be in the web GUI on the switch or it should be

data backed up using Xcopy to my NAS at home. have been tempted to start using restore points, if the PC fails i can reinstall using a captured WIM/ghost image as my pc doesnt change much at home apart from the data. simple and it appears to work ok

this sounds like something I had when 1st using vista/7 if you have just removed the user accounts profile folder without cleaning the registry hive the computer wont be able to recreate the user profile on the machine a symptom of this is new users which had profiles being logged in with a temp profile. might be worth clearing the registry of any old SIDs. I find something like delprof is create for deleting profiles as it does the registry as well (HKLM\software\Microsoft\windowsNT\currentversion\profilelist)

lowest spec machines are 2Ghz Pentium DC's with 4GB ram and some dell 1.8 core duo's which still work well enough for basic word processing and email. we do spend a bit of time with the builds removing as much none essential stuff as possible, windows search PC protection stuff like restore points etc etc.

if possible I would be looking at upgrading the current line if possible through your ISP, do you have an internal proxy as using one of these you can set bandwith limitations for client devices which should stop one or two devices hogging your limited bandwidth. something like a pfsense of a smoothwall express box can be run on the most limited hardware so if you have something knocking about it can be pressed into service without any extra cost

if your not wanting to show the install GUI if you use MSIEXEC and the correct switch you can control if the UI appears amongst other things

NP @witch

have you tried removing the 2 3GB drives installing the OS onto the single and then plugging in the other two. of your not using RAID on the controller i would turn it off and use AHCI. does the CMD version of diskmanagement allow you to select the disk and do anything with it?

See attached, its a little rough and ready but should give you the gist. making MSI's can be a pain and more so if they need updating alot, bearing in mind some apps are quite happy to be run from a share on the server for example so a simple shortcut pointing to the app often is all you need. let me know what you think @witch @speckytecky advanced_inst_guide.docx

@witch just finishing it up and will upload shortly if its still required

ive used smoothwall express for a similar type of setup, I found smoothwall's interface is easier to get to gripes with over pfsense, but pfsense is the more powerful product.

ok ill put something together today i might look at the tutorial they provide as well and pull things in from that

you could quietly use some like photoresizer to batch process images in folders so they are a sensible size before they are added to documents.

@witch offer still stands of sending a little guide to you or you can PM me if you like

im guessing would need to contact capita to get the required install media and the like to set something up

Does anyone run a seperate installation of SIMS for getting to gripes and testing backup/recovery/database migrations?

not using it yet its a planned change however. ive heard some horror stories about it however.

@witch must have changed alot since i last used it with the wizard you should be able to: give the project a name select the directory where the program is installed it then builds a project file from which you can create the MSI to roll out. good thing about the project file is that you can update and and then rebuild the msi with your changes if it get a chance over lunch i could knock up a quick guide to get you going?

@witch must have changed alot since i last used it