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Remote or Unattended Installation Solutions?
HaloZero asks: "I work for a medium-sized company (350+ users), and am charged with new builds and deployments for a mix of aged and new desktops, and a smattering of similar laptops. The hardware is certainly not uniform across the entire infrastructure. Our current deployment 'system' (Ghost/Sysprep, Acronis/NewSID) is somewhat of a kludge -- as my mentor would say -- and I've been looking into alternative, cleaner methods. We're burgeoning on an Active Directory domain, so RIS has been the hot topic on my desk as of late. Does anyone have any experience with RIS? Is there anything that isn't very well documented that I should watch out for? We're considering other unattended install solutions, such as nLite, and a composite of Bart's PE Builder-type setups. Any other suggestions out there?"
Why not use Unattended? http://unattended.sourceforge.net/ - we use it, and it works wonders here. Unattended is a system for fully automating the installation of Windows 2000 Professional and Server, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. When you are finished setting up Unattended, you will be able to boot any PC from a floppy, from a CD-ROM, or directly from the network, answer a few questions, and come back an hour or two later to a fully-installed Windows workstation. We boot from the network, and the machines build themselves without our intervention. They have a step-by-step guide on how to set it up even.
Note that RIS is not a very good solution. Even if you have uniform hardware, (Like Dell's, or HP/Compaq's) changing one driver can muck up the whole process. Not so with unattended. Being an Open Source project, you are im complete control of your build process.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
The thing with ris is that if you put in a lot of effort and time, you can make it do anything you want (and it pays off when you have multiple desktop platforms). I used to come from the ghost/acronis school of thought however after "seeing the light", RIS (and the new up and coming WIM solution - think of it as a combo b/w ris and ghost) is much better.
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This was covered recently in a nearly identical Ask Slashdot almost two months ago. You might find a lot of relvant information in the comments to that story. There were many great suggestions.
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I support about 20,000 desktops, running mostly Windows XP, and here's what we do.
For the actual system image itself, I've created a single DVD that contains a simple boot menu. There are some basic tools (like DBAN and an "old school" Bart's Network Boot Disk) but the bulk of the disk is devoted to an unattended XP install with (a) splipstreamed patches, (b) drivers for ALL of our major hardware models, (c)custom configuration, and (d) all of our enterprise software.
Any time that Dell (or one of our other vendors - kiosks, tablets) ships us a new machine, I update one line in an INF file, add some drivers, and automatically build another image exactly to standard -- no mystyped keys -- no forgotten registry settings. The image completes, sysprep runs, the machine shuts off, and we make an image with Ghost to send to our vendors.
That image is sent back to the OEM, and our boxes come pre-imaged. You don't need a lot of pull with your vendors for this. Most OEMs are hungry enough for your business that they'll do it no matter how small you are -- and Dell's CFI group has been a pleasure to work with.
When a machine shows up at any of our 50+ facilities, the first thing it does after getting a machine-name post-sysprep is boot up, logon as the local administrator, and visit a webpage that presents a "pretty" front end to our automated software deployment tool. [We use Marimba.] The password for the administrative account is then changed to a unique pattern-based one automatically (to allow support from Desktop, but to prevent worm-like activity) and the machine is deployed with any regional or departmental programs chosen from the Marimba front-end.
While you may not have Marimba or Alteris or SMS to do your customization dirty-work for you, you've got Active Directory, and people in the right OU's will get whatever you want deployed to them.
Similarly, we use AD to do all of our policy management -- keeping enforcement of screensavers and proxy manageable.
There's a great joy in having all of your machines running the EXACT same image - with "Extra" software installed from a known reference point (even network shares - as long as it's your network share).
The unattended guides at MSFN.org are a fantastic reference for making an unattended CD/DVD.
Check out http://www.msfn.org/, the "home" of nLite and many other projects. Personally I use nLite, WPI (Windows Post Installer), BTS Driverpacks, and AutoIT3. I have done both Image/Ghost style for multiple PCs and scripted installations, images are too hard to update on a regular basis, I much prefer scripted installs.
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You can achive all of this quite easily with Altiris Deployment Solution, and then some. Imaging, application packaging and deployment, remote execution, basic inventory, remote control, and other management functions are all included. I've been using it for over 5 years and haven't used anything better for managing Windows PCs. You can buy it stand alone or bundled with the Client Management Suite, although for an organization of your size, the CMS is probably overkill. If you create your images properly with sysprep, you can achive near full hardware independence.
I use Unattended for the OS installation and WPKG for applications/updates/configuration/policies (w/ secedit and ActivePerl).
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