Deployment Solution

Currently we have one server for about 150 computers on 16 different subnets.

We are thinking of buying a group of computers to use as local image and PXE servers. Can someone tell me what is involved in setting this up?

We are currently using IP helpers in order to get PXE to work across subnets. Do these just need to be removed so that the clients will see the local PXE server or will we need new IP helpers that point to the local PXE servers?

What i did was set up a local PXE server at each location.  With multiple PXE configurations we were able to have the machine reference the local server to image from.  I used Notification Server to replicate the image out to our package server / PXE server to get the image out there.  If you're not using NS you could always use robocopy, shipping a cd / dvd or other methods to get it out there.

See the DS documentation http://altiris.com/Support/Documentation.aspx for more info.

Check http://kb.altiris.com and search for article 27249.  It has all possible ways to setup PXE.

Nelo

Here's a link to a kb on PXE server redirects which I think is what you're looking to do.  You can use one shared configuration with multiple remote PXE servers.

Article ID: 24298
What is PXE Redirection and how is it used in the Deployment Server?
https://kb.altiris.com/article.asp?article=24298&p=1

Thanks for the info everyone.

If you left the iphelpers and added a local PXE server it would probably be just whichever one answered first. You don't want that obviously. But why would you go away from IP helpers and add extra machines to your network?

The question I'd as here is are you looking to do your imaging "hands-off"?  If so, then adding a PXE server/local image store at each site would be a good idea.  It does add some extra management overhead by adding extra PXE servers to have to configure, but it would give you the ability to just drop a job on a machine and not have to worry about where the image will be pulling from.

If you're doing any "hands-on" during your imaging process, you could just leave PXE the way it is, but add additional menu options for each site and only add the image store to each site.  Then the person doing the imaging could pick the local site from the PXE menu and the image would pull from the local image store.

HTH!

I don't have access to change the PXE bindings. We need to swap out a computer about once per week. When I swap one out, I can't add the bindings to the new computer and have to wait for networking to do it.

The PXE servers will also be left on 24/7 and server as WOL proxies.

The bindings also seem to get 'messed up.' We image every 13 weeks or so. I can image 145/150 clients in one night and it takes the next week to figure out the PXE problems with the remaining 5.  We've had situations where we've imaged one day and a week later, PXE is no longer working. We didn't make any changes to the server or the client. It usually takes networking a couple of days (it has taken as long as 3 weeks) to figure out that 'this setting we changed, which shouldn't affect your stuff, somehow messed up the PXE settings.'  I'm hoping to eliminate some of the these problems by using local PXE servers.

we're going for hands-off. I realize that there will be more work on my parts in terms of management, but if I can eliminate some of the networking problems we're having, it will be worth it.



UPDATE:
I have the pxe part working (client gets menu options, winpe iso), but once WinPE load, I can't image.

I get the following error:
RDeploy: The file could not be opened

I believe that the path to the file is correct. The file is in a shared folder called 'image_share.'
In DS, this is what the path looks like.
\\123.12.12.123\image_share\spring2008_gx520.img

thanks for the help.