imaging process

[Rockrz]

Do you upload the image to a ghost server to image your machines? How does it work with licensing and microsoft product keys?

You can find out more at Solutions for Large Business / Enterprise.

I hear this product is more effective and costs less than FOG

 

[Jayce]

You can find out more at Solutions for Large Business / Enterprise.

I hear this product is more effective and costs less than FOG

FOG costs nothing, so, I'm not too sure about the 'cost less than FOG' part.

For what it's worth, I also utilized FOG as a software distribution point where I'd push out packages, printers, etc. I also used it for inventory purposes of our Win machines.

 

[carnageX]

You can find out more at Solutions for Large Business / Enterprise.

I hear this product is more effective and costs less than FOG

Like Jayce said, not sure how you're computing Acronis costing less than FOG since FOG is open source and free. You just need a central server to run the FOG server.

 

[Rockrz]

Maybe I mis-understood... I thought FOG was talking about Norton Ghost.

 

[carnageX]

Maybe I mis-understood... I thought FOG was talking about Norton Ghost.

See my previous post:

FOG = Free Opensource Ghost.
fogproject.org
Similar to Ghost except that it's free.

 

[WinOutreach2]

There is also MDT, the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, which is a free utility provided by Microsoft from which to automate and manage deployment using all of the free deployment technologies produced by Microsoft. You can create hardware agnostic images able to be deployed on various hardware, application packages which install applications automatically, migrate the data for an existing user on a previous version of Windows to Windows 7 or Windows 8, etc. Like Ghost, you can create optical media from which to launch MDT, or with a Windows Server environment with Windows Deployment Services (WDS), you can boot over the network via PXE.

It is definitely worth a look, and if down the road you want to add the additional features of SCCM, MDT integrates right into SCCM to provide a single interface for all of your tasks. In the other direction, you can also utilize the Microsoft deployment technologies without the interface of MDT. Using ImageX and Windows PE you can perform imaging, and using the Windows System Image Manager (WSIM) you can create answer files for use with Sysprep to automate the actions during deployment including creating a customized default profile and responding to the questions of Windows Welcome without user interaction.

Instructions and guides on how to do all of the above can be found on the Springboard Site on TechNet under the page Deliver and Deploy Windows 7.

Brandon
Windows Outreach Team- IT Pro
The Springboard Series on TechNet

 

[SuxoR]

Very nice post Brandon

I had a MDT it can get a bit overwhelming but once set up it pays dividends. You can choose what image to push to a machine with specific specifications. Answer files will also let you image a machine completely unsupervised, you can also push applications and image on a users desk when all is said and done. IMO it's the best enterprise solution for imaging.