Deployment Solution

Hi, I just purchased and installed DS 7.5 recently.

My objective for using DS is to re-deploy different images to about 30 PCs on a weekly basis. Basically, every friday night, I will re-deploy image to all PCs to prepare for Monday usage.

I have created 1 image and tested on 1 PC.

My task for the deployment of image includes

1. Boot to Automation

2. Deploy image

3. Boot to Production

4. Apply System Configuration

Tasks 1 and 2 passed but failed at 3.

I realised the PC that was deployed with the image disappear from the DS console. The reason it disappear is because the hostname is the same as the PC that I created the image from.

How should I do to achieve my objectives?

Hi there!

I believe you need to recreate the image using Microsoft Sysprep, which will checge the machine name (among other things). The Prepare For Image Capture task will do this. Start at page 157 here for more info:

Symantec™ Deployment Solution 7.5 powered by Altiris™ User Guide

http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC5678

Thank you,

Randy

Hi Randy,

I tried and it screw up my master PC.

I created these tasks:

1. Prepare for image capture

2. Create Image

3. Boot to Production

1 and 2 passed and when my master PC boot to production. I get this error.

The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install windows, click 'OK' to restart the computer, and restart the installation.

After I clicked Ok, my master PC will reboot and end up with the same message again.

This process will just repeat over and over again.

Hi kevinang,

What's the model of your master PC? Is it different from your target client PCs?

Please make sure the hard disk (most likely SATA) operation mode setting in BIOS on your master PC is set to 'Compatible' or 'ATA'. Otherwise, it will cause incompatibility issue.

After you set the BIOS properly, re-install OS on your master PC(remember to delete all partitions and do it from scratch), and then run the capture job.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Tis means the master image is corrupted, the OS needs to be re-installed.

I'm actually testing this out on my Vmware currently before implementing on my actual hardware.

My master PC is a VM and the target client PC is also a VM.

Is my job tasks correct?

1. Prepare for image capture

2. Create Image

3. Boot to Production

Kevin,

I am so sorry. That is odd, though. The Prepare For Image Capture task runs Microsoft's Sysprep utility, which generalizes some things about the OS. It strips the SID (security identifier), machine name and HAL (hardware abstraction layer). This allows the image to be deployable. Since that did not work, I would advise trying to run Sysprep manually (perhaps on a different machine) to see how it runs. Most image deployment operations use Sysprep for image genralization, so that when the image is deployed it generates a new SID, a new HAL and a new machine name.

Thank you,

Randy

Still not working for me.

Can anyone help with this?

1. I need to create an image for re-deploying to many PCs.

2. What tasks should I created for the image?

3. What tasks should I created to deploy the image and change to a random hostname right after image reployment and before the PC boots up to network?

Any help is very much appreciated.

Hi

I assume the image you are working on is a Windows 7 or 8 or 8.1

First I would suggest to work on a VM for your main image.

Install and configure you computer  on that VM when done do a Snapshot.

Make sure you have a working agent on your computer.

For the CAPTURE part
On DS a job with 3 tasks.

1 - prepare for capture

2 - capture image

3 - Restart to prod

Redeploy depend on a lot of thing but for basic redeployment just create a job with 3 tasks

1 - PXE boot

2 - Deploy image

3 - restart on prod.

Regards

Stephan Rissac
Endpoint Managment Engineer
http://www.altes-informatique.com

Hi Stephan,

Thanks for your suggestion.

Actually, I have tried what you suggested already.

The end result is that after deployment, there are 2 VMs with the same hostname and the deployment console will not be able to display both VM. Only 1 can be displayed.

As such, for the re-deployment, what additional tasks should I run to change the VM to a random hostname before it boots up to windows?

Sysprep IS required, even if you don't use the built-in prepare for image capture task.  Per Microsoft, this is required to get a randomized name and support on a networked system.  That's what Sysprep does.

The Prepare for Image Capture task does 2 things: 1) strips the GUID from the agent, and 2) runs Sysprep.  That's it.  If Sysprep is messing up your system, you may need to troubleshoot that.

To test this, you could snapshot the master image (it's a VM, right?) and then manually run sysprep by using a microsoft recommended set of steps (google it - it's painless).  Then if it fails - voila, you know where the problem is.  There are several things you can do to figure out the errors when Sysprep is not working, including reading some logs, but it's not for the faint of heart and too hard to document here (there ARE docs on this somewhere in the KB that I wrote a while back, but I don't know if I ever finished them).

If it's NOT Sysprep, then it might be the unattend.xml file the app is putting in there.  That does happen, though rarely.

Finally, you MIGHT want to see if you're including driver insertion.  If so, that is, if you're using DA, try NOT using DA and see if that helps.

Let us know.

Hi all, I got it working finally.

I reinstall everything from scratch and got it working.

Thanks all!