I was a little surprised that there was no mention on the Juice of a new addition to Deployment Solution 6.9 SP1 - DeployAnywhere. This is part of the Ghost Imaging Foundation which is included with DS and provides hardware independent imaging. It will provide you the capability deploying images to dissimilar hardware. It will take care of (today) HAL, NIC and storage drivers.
Once you install/upgrade to DS 6.9 SP1 you will notice that from Tools menu you have a new option called "DeployAnywhere Driver Database Management". Also, when creating a deploy image job you will have a check mark towards the bottom of the task for DeployAnywhere. This will work with Ghost and RDeploy images. Oh, and did you know that the Ghost engine is also included in DS 6.9 SP1?
Below is some information from Symantec about DeployAnywhere.
DeployAnywhere's hardware independent imaging gives you the ability to take a standard captured image and deploy it to computers that may be using different mass storage drivers, NIC drivers, or HALs (hardware abstraction layers) than those being used by the computer the image was created from.
This is possible because the correct HAL is created and the correct NIC and mass storage drivers are collected from a Windows driver database stored on the server and then deployed as part of the deploy image task. DeployAnywhere is only operational if the option to use it is selected when creating the deploy image job.
Using this method significantly extends the lifespan of your images because they will not need to be modified each time new hardware is introduced into your environment. Instead you only need to update the centrally located drivers database.
By default the drivers database is stored in the DriversDB folder located in your Deployment Share. As part of the Deployment Solution installation, the DriversDB folder is populated with many common NIC and mass storage drivers but additional drivers can be added as needed.
Drivers for DeployAnywhere are managed (added or viewed) using the Deployment Console's menu bar:
Tools->DeployAnywhere Driver Database management
Important: DeployAnywhere may require GhConfig32.exe to perform some tasks. You should ensure that GhConfig32.exe is in the same directory as DeployAnywhere.
Using DeployAnywhere
When all drivers have been added to the DeployAnywhere database, DeployAnywhere is used in conjunction with a Distribute Disk Image task as follows:
- Prepared using Sysprep
If the image was created using Sysprep, mark and configure this section to match the image being deployed.
- Use DeployAnywhere hardware independent imaging
Mark this option.
- Advanced (the advanced button associated with this option)
Click to view or change the default parameters of: /target=c:\windows /ddb=\driversdb
Target refers to the location of the Windows folder on the target computer.
The DDB switch specifies the location of the DeployAnywhere database.
- Automation pre-boot environment
This must be set to a WinPE configuration. The Default Automation option can be selected if the default is configured to use a WinPE pre-boot operating system.
When the Deployment job is run, WinPE loads and the image is deployed. After the image has been deployed, but still running the WinPE pre-boot operating system, DeployAnywhere is run and discovers what type of hardware is being used. Based on what is discovered, a new HAL is then created and it and the required drivers are deployed, thus allowing the computer to boot successfully.
Discovering Missing Drivers for DeployAnywhere
To determine if your DeployAnywhere database has the drivers needed for a particular computer, start the computer in question using WinPE and run the following DeployAnywhere command:
ghdplyAw32.exe /target=c:\Windows /dbb=DriversDB /eval
If a mass storage or NIC driver is missing, a list of the missing drivers is displayed on the screen.
Note: This same list is stored in a file named ghDplyAw.txt.
This discovery process can be automated using a Deployment Run Script task using the following command type of script:
cd \Ghost
ghdplyAw32.exe /target=c:\Windows /dbb=\DriversDB /eval