Making WDS Images
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Is it normal for enterprises to have the systems admin/Engineer make the images for the techs to deploy? currently we are making the ones for each department and maintaining them, and then the technicians do everything else. Our Director/CIO wanted to know if I would like to have them start having them do that part.
I'm not sure, part of me would like to have them do it. But, I'm also thinking that might causes issues if they don't test them well enough and start deploying them like crazy it could go very badly.
Also on a side note, is there any reason not to use Hyper-V VMs on the WDS server itself for making the images? before they had been using a physical computer but I hate the clutter in my office and would rather just use a VM.
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I've worked with a lot of imaging but very little with WDS. In a more general sense, I would say that it is extremely common for an engineering group to come up with the gold masters for images and then deployments are done by techs. That makes the most sense.
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@scottalanmiller
What else do you use for imagine?
((Ones like WDS atleast where you do a master roll out))We currently mainly use clonezilla but will probably be trying WDS soon
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@Sparkum said:
@scottalanmiller
What else do you use for imagine?I don't roll out Windows images. You can use all kinds of things, but normally we use cloud platform imagining systems built into the cloud platform.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I've worked with a lot of imaging but very little with WDS. In a more general sense, I would say that it is extremely common for an engineering group to come up with the gold masters for images and then deployments are done by techs. That makes the most sense.
Yeah the last guy had them using Ghost, but I don't like it and think it's too manual of a process for them.
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WDS and Clonezilla are the two that I tend to come across in my travels.
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Acronis works a treat but no one uses it because it's so bloody expensive.
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@MattSpeller said:
Acronis works a treat but no one uses it because it's so bloody expensive.
It's that a per computer cost?
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One of my friends just got hired at a local college to do this... he basically manages a few labs and builds/tests/deploys images.
I am a huge fan of FOG but I'm not sure if they have updated to do SSDs and >2TB drives yet.
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@coliver said:
One of my friends just got hired at a local college to do this... he basically manages a few labs and builds/tests/deploys images.
We don't do much of this our main job is Server & network but, they have making the Gold master to make sure the technicians don't screw it up haha.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@MattSpeller said:
Acronis works a treat but no one uses it because it's so bloody expensive.
It's that a per computer cost?
Yeah, and it's ~$1.50/$2 every time you use it in addition to the cost of getting the software to begin with ($8000?ish?)
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@MattSpeller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@MattSpeller said:
Acronis works a treat but no one uses it because it's so bloody expensive.
It's that a per computer cost?
Yeah, and it's ~$1.50/$2 every time you use it in addition to the cost of getting the software to begin with ($8000?ish?)
That's just dumb. We don't spend money we don't have to so I wouldn't get that. (the less profit we get the less bonus we get, which is normally at 50% of your base pay unless we were doing well on making a profit.)
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@MattSpeller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@MattSpeller said:
Acronis works a treat but no one uses it because it's so bloody expensive.
It's that a per computer cost?
Yeah, and it's ~$1.50/$2 every time you use it in addition to the cost of getting the software to begin with ($8000?ish?)
What's the upside to it? We've tried using their software before and could not even get it to work (nor could they.) I've not had an opportunity to see their products function. I've heard that they can be good, but what's the value about the free solutions?
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@scottalanmiller I used it in the XP era and it was freaking awesome!!!!
Hardware agnostic images, driver repositories, actually useful other features that I don't remember and you can now find in WDS, key management, really slick network boot 'n nuke 'n image... ugh so much stuff!
Edit: to give some back story, this was when I was very new to IT basic admin stuff & 20yrs old - ahhh the memories.
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@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller I used it in the XP era and it was freaking awesome!!!!
Hardware agnostic images, driver repositories
All that's in WDS which cost no more than a windows license which is $700.. and can run hyper-v to make your images on was well.
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@thecreativeone91 yup, I don't think they have a lot to offer above and beyond WDS but I've not used it in years
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@MattSpeller said:
Edit: to give some back story, this was when I was very new to IT basic admin stuff & 20yrs old - ahhh the memories.
lol. I'm only 24 haha.
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@thecreativeone91
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