Deployment Solution

What is the best way to deploy new laptops and desktops using DS 7.1? Scripted OS vs Image Capture and Deployment?

What recommendations from your experience would you share with someone just getting into DS 7.1?

We use a windows 7 hardware independent captured image.  I use image capture because I wanted to get the current windows updates on the machine as well as a very few pieces of base software that goes everywhere (like Office).  We use deploy anywhere and have had good success knock on wood.

After the image restores, we then add the specific software in the job depending on where machine is going (adobe reader, flash, etc).  We keep items that frequently change like Adobe items purposely off the base image and only rebuild that base image if we updated our DS/CMS environment (so latest client needs to get on the image) or I want to update the image to include more recent windows updates (2-3x a year so far).

We use a mix of both in a kind of tiered process. We create three images, a Base image, a Firm image and a Standard image. The Base image is created from a scripted OS install, with Windows updates and small configuration changes applied before it is captured. The Firm image is created from the Base image, with our firm's branding applied and license-free common software installed (java, pdf reader, etc). The Standard image is created from the Firm image and has all common licensed software installed (MS Office, etc). We use software deployment tasks and run script tasks to install software and perform configuration automatically in each "build" job, with the output being a hardware independent image we can deploy. The final deploy jobs push the image, then install machine-specific software and settings (remote access software to laptops, etc). Everything is automated except for manually installing windows updates at each step, and a few manual configurations we make in the base image which Windows doesn't make easy to script. About once a month we start from scratch with a base image and recreate all three images. Since we use the same software deployment jobs in the image build process we use to deploy software live, any changes we've made during the month to software (updated, versions, etc) are automatically reflected in our new images.

If you've got any amount of software and customization in your images, I would definitely recommend something along these lines. With the reduced speed of communication of 7.1 compared to 6.9, going from bare scripted OS install to fully-prepped system is a LONG process.

I forgot to mention the machine I build our base image on (some use VMs), before creating a disk image of it I create a backup image.  This allows me to easily restore pre-sysprep if I need to (and makes it easy to update the image when I need to).  If you're not 100% sure what you're doing with sys prep or your custom answer file, I highly suggest this step.

When I need to update our base image, I restore the latest backup image, run windows updates, update client agents, then create new back up image, then new disk image.  The process goes pretty quickly (recreating our base image).

I am glad that you mentioned this step.  I was thinking of building a VM to build my master image.  I am still looking into the options available and will need to check into just taking a backup using Altris.

Also, I am glad that you mentioned the need to sysprep.  Under Manage - Jobs and Tasks - Create New Task -- I am seeing the task of prepare image for capture?  Any help on how to best utilize this task?

Interesting how you build your base - to an updated base (firm) and then to an even more updated base (standard).  We do have a good bit of customization.  I am thinking of skipping the base and just having an image compareble to your firm image.  Thoughts?

finish setting up your master image.

Run a job 3 steps - reboot to pxe, a create backup image task, and a reboot to production task (maybe you can skip this if you do a VM snapshot and/or you're pretty confident your sysprep won't blow up).

Then run another job with first step 'prepare image for capture' (this runs sysprep and wipes GUIDs on the agent), and 2nd task in the job is is create disk image.  You will need to enter windows licensing and Reboot to PXE in the prepare for image capture task.  

You can also add a reboot to production task at the end in that job if you want it to reboot.  I usually let it sit in PXE and then test deploying my image to that machine.