Not sure if there are any white papers that specifically address this. But in your scenario, I would create an image job and make that part of the "Initial Deployment", that way you shouldn't have to prestage or have the aclient or dagent on any of the machines ahead of time.

You will, of course, have to set one up as a master, including the aclient or dagent, and put that image on the server from where the "initial deployment' event will pull it. You will also need to decide what "automation client"(winPE, Linux, or DOS) and method of delivery (partition, PXE, or disk).

if you decide to go with pxe and initial deployment be very cautious of the computers on your network that do not have the aclient/dagent already installed.  If you set up your initial deploy to auto image computers, and you boot a computer already on the network but without the aclient/dagent it will use that initial deploy job.

We use it all the time here.  I have 2 jobs assigned to Initial deployment.  This causes a menu to pop up.  1.  Backup computer, 2.  Deploy Sysprep Image.  If you get a menu, that should help to alleviate fears.  It also warns about a destructive task and gives you the option to abort at that point before kicking off the imaging.

Interesting topic. I just created a couple of sysprep images for XP and Vista.  The problem creating a master image is that newer machines use new NICs or Mass Storage Drivers. So,  I have a prestine master image and I let DeployAnywhere do the NIC and Mass storage part.  This keeps the image small :)

Now, I do not like to use init. deployment jobs like some of u do.  In my invironment, I changed the PXE setting for Init. deploy so it does not wait in the PXE boot menu, then it processed to the defualt aumtomation (Linux is default and I change it to WinPE) and when the automation client talks to DS (engine) my computer nicely appears in the New Computers part in the DS COnsole waiting for a job.  At this point I could send not only the imaging job, but other jobs like configs and software deployment.

Hi. We do the same as Nelo, not initial deploy, but the menu option of bhawver is nice also - Using Rdeploy in Multicasting mode, we can deploy 1 site in the same time multiple machines. After, NS reinstall the addition softwares. It takes a total 1h30 for a total migration a site. My customer migrate 2000 to XP site by site, mid-day, without stopping production or night IT working.

With Ghost and DeployAnyWhere option from DS 6.9 SP1: We can use the "old" image, on "new" hardware, without rebuilding the SYSPREP. We add the new NIC & Storage drivers in the "DeployAnyWhere" DB. Must add also the video, sound and so on drivers in the "drivers" folder inside the image we deploy (GhostExplorer). Very nice, except I see 2 missing I do not investigate yet:

1- Native Multicast support? Did you know if the Multicasting will still working using Ghost like before with Rdeploy?

Or do we have to do in 2 steps instead of a single like Rdeploy:

1. start a "GhostCastServer" with the image on a local site machine.
2. start the multicast image operation on multiple clients, source this server.

2- Native WinPE PreBoot Updating from DAW DB (DeployAnyWhere) ?

If want to use PXE, or not, you need to preboot on USB/CD/Network to deploy the image on a machine: If you want to have any chance to image the machine, your preboot need to "have" the new "storage" driver. If you want to NETWORK PreBoot, you must also "have" the new "nic" driver ! the added drivers

I would like a check option in the DAW DB to see which one is or not in the WinPE preboot, and just add a check to update this. ? I will do a Feature Request for this, and back publish in there the link to subscribe.

Except you already do/see something I was missing? Please just tell me !

Notice: Using Ghost, it is not necessary anymore to PREBOOT for Building an image, you can do a "hot imaging" of a machine. But it is not possible for "deploying" an image (and will not, also with Window 8 I guess, perhaps using VDI :)

You take a look those white papers:

How to capture and deploy a Vista image: https://kb.altiris.com/article.asp?article=37964&p=1

Deployment Solution™ 6.5 Hardware Independent Imaging v4: https://kb.altiris.com/article.asp?article=21224&p=1

But personally, I do not like using the "integrated SysPrep" of Altiris & prefer to use a standalone and independent SYSPREP image.

A few useful details in building your image in the Scott WP, all the same an old document there: https://kb.altiris.com/article.asp?article=22035&p=1

Good luck ;-)

I've never used Ghost with Altiris.  Before Altiris, I used Ghost Solution Suite and you could use Multicasting from that console, it would start up the ghostcast server for you.  I think you might need to do that as well if you must use multicasting.  Be careful though, if your switches aren't set to conver the multicast signals to unicast, you could flood your network and bring it to a crawl or to it's knees.

As for the WinPE, I don't use WinPE, it takes too long for it to boot (just my opinion).  Linux is faster to boot and is 32 bit so it seems to be just as using WinPE, just doesn't have a gui interface.  Just my opinion, and it works best in my environment.  Your's may be different and may have a requirement for WinPE such as vbs scripting or other items.

If I have a customer that wants to allow bare-metal machines to use PXE, I usually set up a job that does nothing and make that the default.  I have it do a run script task with just a REM statement or something like that.

I also default to a REM Do nothing task, but more recently I found it works well to change that to a wait task. I can drag jobs after-the-fact this way. Each scenario is different so this is just another idea to think about.