Automating OS installation

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starring

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Good day fellows,

I work for a government department that has 4 or even 6 different brands of client PCs, about +/- 400 offices scattered around south africa now, Im trying to figure out, in such an environment, how one would go about reloading OS with drivers and some basic software from a central location using PXE given that we have several brands in the environment. Please advise.
 
This is possible but I don't know exactly how it's done. The place I worked at had thousands of pc's and images were remotely deployed.

What I can however tell you is that they had a base image build that contained all the required drivers for the different models and a base application list. This image worked on all pc's.
After the image was deployed and you logged into the domain based on your profile other applications you required for your work were pushed to your desktop via an automated process. The same process was used for virus updates & software patches/updates etc. The images & software were first built in a lab and tested for stability etc before being pushed to the desktop ensuring the desktops were always up to date enterprise wide. The pc's were also locked down so the users could not load any schit on them, they could only change a few things like resolution etc. My Documents etc were mapped to a server drive so all user data lived on the server and not the local pc eliminate the loss of data on a reformat or hardware failure and the servers were obviously backed up. The above is also an easy way of keeping track of software licenses. It cuts down on your desktop support staff though so not everybody is going to be happy :D Besides this they also had built in remote management for remote tech support over the phone etc.

MS & other companies offer the server software to do this. There has been some threads about this in the past so maybe do a google search for them.
 
Sheesh the catch22 there is that I wouldn't even have the time to obtain/test/deploy something so advanced :D but I would so love an automated environment.
 
Bobbin said:
Sheesh the catch22 there is that I wouldn't even have the time to obtain/test/deploy something so advanced :D but I would so love an automated environment.
Click to expand...

The time invested is well worth it taking into consideration the money and time saved afterwards.
Your number of support tickets will see a massive drop.
You can reduce your IT staff compliment by a big margin. If you have a hardware contract with the PC supplier for the hardware maintenance then you can cut staff even further as they just swap out a HDD, screen or the chassis.
Most support calls after that are related to stupid users not knowing how to use an app or stuff outside of the desktop like a network that's down etc (but even that should be locked down and fully managed.)

It still baffles my mind when I hear about support staff running around with cd/dvd 7 external hard drives fixing faults. Very little need for it in this day & age.
 
ponder said:
The time invested is well worth it taking into consideration the money and time saved afterwards.
Your number of support tickets will see a massive drop.
You can reduce your IT staff compliment by a big margin. If you have a hardware contract with the PC supplier for the hardware maintenance then you can cut staff even further as they just swap out a HDD, screen or the chassis.
Most support calls after that are related to stupid users not knowing how to use an app or stuff outside of the desktop like a network that's down etc (but even that should be locked down and fully managed.)

It still baffles my mind when I hear about support staff running around with cd/dvd 7 external hard drives fixing faults. Very little need for it in this day & age.
Click to expand...

It baffles my mind too. Thing is this Global Corporate company I work for seems to not have enough money to even keep our file server above 3gig space :confused:. So I am one of those guys you mentioned...just doing everything manually. And all the network admin can do is send out mails to ask users to please remove all the junk but nowadays she hasn't got the time either.

Even people who leave the company I have to store their data on my only exernal HDD :eek: I am completely at a loss and when I complain about it I am just met with all kinds of resistance. I also once asked if I may have access to a 2008 server to try set up a deployment server and create/maintain my own images. No server available.

Well on the plus side I am the only PC Support here so they can't cut down any further :D

Takes me about 3-4 hours to deploy one PC all things considered. It is very long in my opinion.

I suppose it doesn't help ranting about it here though :/
 
I even use my own work laptop as software storage/center on the network. OMG. And this is a borrowed laptop I had to beg for.

Edit: Eish sorry for hijacking this thread OP :)
 
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google WAIK.

Windows automated installation kit, it is a time consuming and manual process, but that is what its gonna take if you want your image created the right way. How you deploy that image is not as important as how it was compiled.
 
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