Bulk imaging - Best practice ?

Question

What is the best method to image a large number of pcs at once? Do I need
to utilize the wol feature? Should I setup a multi-cast session? Last
year, we used boot cds and did about 5 at a time. Any gotchas that I
should consider too?
Thanks

Answer 1

You're making it wayyyyyy too tough.
Get one workstation perfected. Put an image of that on your imaging server
for posterity.
Then use that perfected workstation as the "master" in a big huge multicast
session with as many PCs as you can get ready to go before lunch. Start the
session before lunch, go to lunch, come back and reboot all of the machines.
I think my record was 20 PCs at once, and I had no problems. The only
problems I ever had was when I was imagine a "used" machine to another
machine after a hard drive failure, and the "used" PC had a ton of IE temp
files on it (should've checked that first anyway). You might get some
complaints if you have production machines on the same LAN, as every
available bit of bandwidth will be used in the multicast. And, if your PCs
can get an IP, and can ping the "master" workstation, then you should be
good to go unless you've done some really funky stuff to your routers.
Why didn't I use my ZfD imaging server? That was more difficult... albeit
just slightly. As I said, I keep it simple.
Tim Wohlford
<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:IBNUg.6225$[email protected]..
> What is the best method to image a large number of pcs at once? Do I need
> to utilize the wol feature? Should I setup a multi-cast session? Last
> year, we used boot cds and did about 5 at a time. Any gotchas that I
> should consider too?
> Thanks