Questions[imaging](server)

Where I work we deploy a lot of computers to staff and we try to keep them all roughly the same.

Presently we take each new machine type we get, configure it the way we want, and then take an image of it using Norton Ghost. We then deploy this to any other computers that come in.

The problem is that we have to not only do this for each machine, but also manually keep them up to date. Is there a convenient tool for building a relatively hardware independent image that can be updated in a virtual environment?

Ideally build image on virtual machine, use drivers from driver packs to allow deploy on any machine, thus reducing our work to simply fixing the minor driver issues that may come up and changing the computer name.

I know this is a feature of some very large enterprise type software, but I was hoping for a relatively simple solution. If there are several possibilities, I'm mostly looking for some direction - i.e.: keywords to look for, etc.

I'm running Windows Deployment Services on Windows Server 2008 R2 on top of an ESX 4.0 box. This is the only function of this VM instance, although it had previously functioned as an AD Domain Controller. My DHCP server is running on our primary Domain Controller, which is also Server 2008 R2, but running on metal. Everything was working perfectly until we recently had our backup generator fail during a power outage, causing all of our servers and networking equipment to lose power for a period of time. When we brought all of our equipment back up, everything was working as expected except for WDS.

Our network is split up into several different vlans. Now, depending on which vlan the client computer is on, it's behaving differently when attempting to PXE boot into WDS. Our servers are located on the 10.55.x.x vlan, which, due to the nature of it, has no DHCP server active in it. The first computer we plugged in happened to be in the 10.99.x.x vlan, which is supposed to be reserved for network management devices (i.e. switches), but we've been using it occasionally otherwise. That computer gave us PXE-E11 ARP Timeout errors. When we moved to a different computer on the 10.19.x.x vlan (for general purpose use), it finally gets an IP from DHCP, but it presents us with a very stumping PXE-E32 TFTP Open Timeout error. Before the power outage, it didn't matter which vlan a device was on; it would PXE boot and image just fine.

I've made no changes to anything server-side. Everything is configured exactly the same way it was on my WDS and DHCP servers as before the power outage. I've tried several different computers, including different models. All of this, combined with the quirky behavior depending on the vlan, makes me think something went wrong in one or more of our switches, probably because of the power outage. Unfortunately, I'm no network guy, and I know very little about how to configure our switches properly.

Is this an issue with switches, etc? If so, how can I fix it? Is there some magical option I'm not aware of? Does anybody out there have any hunches? I've pretty much exhausted my ideas.

• Our main switch is an HP Procurve 5406.
• We also have 3x HP Procurve 4208 switches.
• The ESX Server is an HP ProLiant DL380 G6.
• The WDS VM is currently using the VMXNET3 network adaptor, but we've also tried the E1000 adaptor.

I'm just getting the hang of trying to configure/use Windows Deployment Services (WDS) to image Windows 7 workstations on our network.

I have the WDS server configured so any machine can request an image, but the administrator must authorize the configuration. This way we would minimize accidental (or malicious) re-imaging of computers on the network.

For the initial setup, I configured the base Windows 7 install and boot images then hooked up a testbed Dell machine. Booted the Dell with PXE boot, it started the PXE boot, and went back to the WDS server to authorize ID 1 machine. No problem, the Dell booted to Win7 setup and started the whole configuration process.

Got all done and started going through instructions to create an image WIM file on the master; Sysprep with the generalize option completely hosed the staging client. After many profanities, I decided to start from scratch again.

Rebooted the client with PXE boot, and this time it saw the WDS server and started the re-imaging process again without me authorizing it.

This makes me think that if individuals on the network managed to PXE boot an imaged machine, the machine will allow them to re-image it without authorization.

Is this the case?

If so, is there a way to clear out the already authorized ID's/MAC's from the WDS server?

Using Windows Deployment Services on Windows 2008 Server.

I've been researching on the subject of workstation deployment for a while, and found a ton of info and dozens different methods and tools, but no "best practice" method that doesn't lack at least one feature that i consider required for the solution to be perfect.

I'm currently interested in windows workstation deployment, but if the tools can be extended to Linux, then it's an added value.

I want the deployment tools I use to be able to do the following:

• hardware independent - I want my image or installation to have a minimum of hardware and driver dependency, so that i can use a single image/package for all workstations
• easily updatable - I want to be able to update my image as easily as possible without redeploying/rebuilding/reimaging all configurations
• PXE bootable deployment - I want the tools to be bootable off the network so that I don't need a boot cd/DOK.
• scriptable for minimum human input - Ideally, the tool should run automatically after being booted and perform a "default" deployment (including partitioning) unless prompted otherwise. i.e - take a pc, hook it up, power on, PXE boot and forget about it until the OS is deployed.

I found no single product or environment that does all this. Closest i came to is the windows deployment services/WIM image format.

I also checked out numerous imaging and deployment tools including clonezilla, ghost, g4u, wpkg and others, but most of them lack the hardware Independence and updatability features.

We currently have a Symantec Ghost server setup that does imaging over the network, but I'm not satisfied with it as it has all the drawbacks i listed above.

Do you have suggestions how to optimize the process of workstation deployment? How do you deploy them in your organization?

Thanks!

Vadim.

Trying to cut down our deploy times and looking for suggestions and shortcuts you or your team uses to get back in the terminal and out of the data center. Looking at the entire process from ordering gear to end of life.