computer imaging question

At the college I'm working at they do a lot of imaging on the machines the students and facility use. It's important enough that the guys that build the images are really important and the lower level techs want to take up the job. Most of the lower techs and assistants mostly just image and do some custom configuring machines that need deep freeze or whatever software it needs.

My question is, how important is images to a regular company? My last two out of 3 or so projects/jobs had a lot of ghosting with PXE and the such so I assume a lot of companies use imaging when they configure new machines or machines with viruses? But I'm mostly curious how it is on the corporate front.

I'm tired now so if my typing sucks/unclear then I blame it on that.

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Comments

blargoe

I'd say it's pretty important. Any new system deployment (new system, or OS upgrade) or a rebuild is going to be from an image usually.

ally_uk

For me there are 3 aspects of what makes a good I.T infrastructure Backup / disaster recovery, security and deployment setup. having a good deployment system helps because it saves time in setting up / repairing machines put it this way if you were told tommorow that you had to undertake a project where 300 new Identical Windows 7 machines have to be setup would you manually install the operating system on each machine and sit at each machine and enter the credentials such as the product key hell no this would take forever to do.

Technologies such as RIS, WDS are a god send because you save the company money in terms of staff costs i.e the time it takes to setup a machine and get the customer / client back up and running.

Have you had any experiece of deployment? now may be a good time to start learning about it.

Devilsbane

Talic wrote: »

My question is, how important is images to a regular company? My last two out of 3 or so projects/jobs had a lot of ghosting with PXE and the such so I assume a lot of companies use imaging when they configure new machines or machines with viruses? But I'm mostly curious how it is on the corporate front.

As I have worked both as a lab assistant in a college and in the corporate world, I know first hand that it is quite different. In the corporate world, obviously anytime a new computer is built it needs to be imaged, but then it doesn't need to get reimaged again unless A. the user breaks it or B the computer is given to someone else. And sometimes issue B doesn't even warrant a new image to be deployed.

In the school enviornment, the computers were reimaged at least once a semester. It was the easiest way to clean off all of the junk that the students had done to them while also adding new software that was needed. And also we would have to do it anytime one was broke.

N2IT

Talic wrote: »

At the college I'm working at they do a lot of imaging on the machines the students and facility use. It's important enough that the guys that build the images are really important and the lower level techs want to take up the job. Most of the lower techs and assistants mostly just image and do some custom configuring machines that need deep freeze or whatever software it needs.

My question is, how important is images to a regular company? My last two out of 3 or so projects/jobs had a lot of ghosting with PXE and the such so I assume a lot of companies use imaging when they configure new machines or machines with viruses? But I'm mostly curious how it is on the corporate front.

I'm tired now so if my typing sucks/unclear then I blame it on that.

It's everything.

We don't Ghost here because it clones the GUID which freaks out SMS/SCCM. But we do use a ZTI product for all our corporate images. We use one brand of PC for our Desktop and Laptops.

When an end user has a virus run a ZTI / Image. Then you can restore their personality with a USMT tool or something similar. Really the biggest pain of the process is users who have software that requires a special license, mainly for vertical software. Pushing out applications to the end users via software deployment is easy enough. I think the image process is a huge business plus and saves your company $$$$$ in the long run. having a user down for hours while you explorer whats wrong is wasteful and silly. Just reimage the dang thing and then push the software. In our environment we can reimage a machine in just under 40 mins.

Devilsbane

N2IT wrote: »

It's everything.

We don't Ghost here because it clones the GUID which freaks out SMS/SCCM. .

sysprep is your answer