Client Management Suite

Since we already own Altiris CMS and currently using the Altiris DS (6.9) solution for some other things I wanted to drop a quck note as ask how people are doing lab imaging (hopefully not to complicated for our desktop people) nowadays.   In the past, I'd create a golden ghost image that was not in the domain and then push that image to all machines, rename the machines, run newsid and then add them to the domain.   But, I have not done this for years.... and wanted to understand how people are doing it nowadays?    If I see something posted that looks good I'll get back and ask more questions as this will then probably be passed onto them to actually implement.    Thanks.

We do the following here....

1) Create a large hidden automation partition on the machines
2) Deliver image to computer 
3) Save image to hidden partition as %ID%.img (no syspreping or aclient config etc required)
4) Restore image 

The initial preparation is slow, as it's a image delivery to production partition, and then a local create to the hidden partition. However the restore times are fast.

This is particularly useful when machines across the lab get different software bundles. Each computer houses the image for *that* machine only. And as the machine will be restored the computer with the same name/domain etc, no extra reboots required after restore.

If you're going to go the imaging route (which isn't my favorite), this is what I was going to recommend.  Alternatively, lock it down with something like SteadyState or DeepFreeze, or go virtual and eliminate the entire hassle by using non-persistent VMs.

every now and then. As the machine account password is changed on the "live" machine but not in the image?

It will do if the client is configured to request a new password on a regular schedule. This client setting should be modified in the image (or through GPO) to force it to never request a new password. This is good for VMs too.

The credit for this top tip comes from our resident AD Guru, Darren.

Domain member: Disable machine account password changes > Enabled?

I'll know in 30 or 45 days.

Going virtual is good for software testing, For some things, you still need specific hardware. Thus, virtualisation is not the answer to everything.

Should you disable the option for machines not to request a new password, ensure you only do this for the lab OU and not for your entire Enterprise.

Hi CTgeek -are you ok on this one for now? Did you get this working -or at least pass on enough info for someone else to implement? ;-)