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It's nice that you have a new way to do RIS. I know some peers that are doing RIS and this looks like a promising solution.
However, I take issue with your statement that disk imaging is a bad idea:
"But it is usually a bad idea. Never mind that imaging provides poor support for non-uniform hardware; the big problem is that it creates a maintenance nightmare."
This is true for *ANY* shop that trys to maintain a "clone" for all their different hardware. Indeed, that would be a maintenance nightmare. However, when done correctly, and you build a "works on anything" standard load image, it can go down on dissimilar hardware, thus you're only maintaining a single image.
should instead read:
True, it takes some time and effort to "correctly" build your works-on-anything image, but so does figuring out one's RIS scripted installs.
Upgrading your image (service packs, updates, software upgrades) need only be done once on your standard load image. Additionally, with an image, you can have your load already "properly" configured, with all your other secondary applications, utilities, and useability features and settings configured. Maintaining a standard load image is made even easier using virtual machine technology. You simply call one of your VMs your "gold master", and it becomes the single source the image you deploy anywhere. I've had a works-on-anything standard load image since Windows NT4, and have succesfully deployed it on desktops and laptops from year to year since then - dissimilar hardware, of course. Also, imaging is apparently faster. I noticed you mention that you'll be done in "an hour or two". Imaging my load takes about 15 minutes. At reboot, hardware is automatically discovered and configured (because the source image was *properly* created to account for it) and there is minimum configuration required, and all our corporate apps are already installed, configured and ready to go. For example, see the "Universal Imaging Utility". Though I don't use this product, the concept is the same...I've "rolled my own". When you're done with the scripted install, now you still need to manually install and configure your other applications. I know with scripted imaging you are able to include scripted installs for other applications as part of the process, but now how many applications do you now need to figure out how to script? And what about the applications that aren't "scriptable"?
The one place for scripted installs I suppose is where you're rolling out "vanilla" Windows, with minimal configuration tweaking and additional applications, such as OEM computer distributors. |
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