First I would like to commend you for making your resources available and the great effort you have put forth.
I have to express my exception to many of the statements you have made.
1.) "Imaging is a bad idea" I manage an XP Ghost image which is deployed to a minimum of six different desktops/notebooks at any one time. I update the image with new drivers as needed and as new hardware in added and old is retired. Is imaging for every situation? No, it is not. If you more than a few hundred systems and know how the load process works well enough and have a need to rapidly deploy many systems then I believe and can backup with experience, that imaging is very advantageous.
Hi Evan,
once upon a time, I also was very enthusiastic about disk cloning, but came across some problems after a while. My disk images included many applications and I had to (re)build images again and again whenever any of the included apps was upgraded.
Just look at the difference of upgrading unattended repository compared to upgrading a disk image.
Scenario 1: you have an unattended software repository with lots of applications, you need to change one application to a higher release.
Solution: copy new setup files to \\server\install\packages\name_of_app. Assuming, the software vendor still uses the same installer technology with the same silent switches, this is all what has to be done.
Effort: a matter of a few minutes.
Scenario 2: you have a hdd image with lots of applications, you need to upgrade one of them.
Solution: deploy you're existing image onto a testing machine and boot it, upgrade application on the machine and take an image of the new machine configuration.
Effort: from my own experience, even on fast machines and even with small image sizes, this will take about 2 or 3 hours.
See the difference?
BTW, it is possible to mix disk imaging and unattended installation for your deployment scenario.
I could imagine this:
You deploy a very basic hdd image (containing only OS + big apps like MS Office) to your machines and install several applications "on demand" with unattended. I have created an application-only-script (see http://www.ubertechnique.com/unattended/appsonly) that can be used on PCs that already have Windows installed.
Regards Gerhard
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