When we talk about Provisioning or imaging we always think about Deployment Solution 6.9, but Symantec has come up with a solution which provide the same functionalities like DS 6.9. Use the robustness of Notification Server, now you can image your machines using Deployment Solution 7.0
Deployment Solution 7.0, allow administrator to manage their machines, capture and distribute personalities, create and deploy images, backup and restore images and change your machine system configurations.
For executing Deployment Solution tasks you should have Deployment Solution installed on Notification Server along with Deployment Solution task server handler. Deployment task server can also be installed on your task server or your site server.
Install deployment solution agent on the client machines, it installs the plug in Altiris agent along with Deployment Solution Automation agent. This automation part helps in executing imaging tasks in preboot environment.
Let's have a sneak preview on a few of the features:
Capture and Distribute Personality:
Create a personality, i.e., this include profile settings you would like to migrate to other system, by default it comes with a few pbt files which can be used to capture personality otherwise create your own pbt using PCT editor. PCT editor is installed with your Deployment Solution Task Server Handler.
You can also create vista compatible personalities, which can also be run on Windows xp machines. Also, you can protect the personalities by using passwords.
Once the personalities are created, it can be easily being distributed to your collection of computer using a scheduler task or a quick run mechanism which is common to all Notification Server solutions.
You can make use of command lines to distribute the personality of your choice.
Create and Deploy images:
This is most important and main focus of the product. Creation of the sysprep images and deploys them in your corporate environment. Currently two operating systems are supported viz Microsoft Windows xp and Vista.
This is important for which operating system you are creating a sysprep image as for Windows Xp you need to keep deploy.cab file manually on c:\sysprep folder. If you are using Client Management Suite you can perform this task using Software Management Solution. In case of Windows vista you need not to worry as deploy.cab as it gets installed in operating system by default.
There are two tools which gets ship with deployment Solution for imaging are Ghost and RDeploy.
Choose any of the tools according to our choice. Create Disk Image task also allows takes if your target machine is in domain or in workgroup, if it is domain it will join back the machine in domain once the machine boots in product ion mode/environment.
Creation of sysprep image is a complex job/task which includes creating a sysprep image, booting the machine in automation, creating an image, booting the machine in production followed by post sysprep configuration.
Sysprep image is an ideal or a gold image which should be deployed in a corporate environment.
Your OS licenses are also maintained. User can add the OS licenses from the settings page; this will maintain licenses for Windows xp and Vista.
Deploying of an image:
To deploy the image select the image from the drop down list in Deploy Disk image task.
This will intelligently select Operating system you are deploying, helping you in managing the OS license keys. Another advantage of this task is that you can also define domain credentials in case you want to join the machine as soon as imaging is done.
You can also change the ip address or the name of the machine if you wish to change it after imaging process is completed. For this, create a new System Configuration under Settings and apply those setting by providing the configurations.
Backup and restore images:
Back up your machine by creating an image using Ghost/Rdeploy as tool. Create a Back Up Disk Image task, define the tools and schedule it on the client machine. This will boot your machine in automation environment and will create the image. Whenever you want to revert the image use task Restore Back Up Image task. Just select the image and deploy it on the client machine.
Apply System Configuration:
This task tasks helps you to join machine in domain or the workgroup.
Also you can change the ip addresses. It supports multiple NICs.
Initial Deployment:
In case, you are unable to boot you machine in production or the machine does not contain an Operating System, you can still deploy images and can also perform a few of the operations supported in Automation Environment.
During installation process an ISO is created which can be burn on a CD. You can use this CD to boot the machine in automation environment. Define the tasks in Initial Deployment page; you can configure the time interval the client machine should wait to receive the task along with the task list. In this way Deployment Solution also supports the machine on which Operating system is not installed and an image can be easily deployed on it.
The above mentioned tasks are created using the same mechanism used by Notification Server to create, edit task or jobs.
This article is just a beginning, there is more to come.