Upgrading to Windows 7 help.

pixa241

So I just started my new job a week ago and my boss already gave me a project to start working on. Basically we need to move about 200 computer from xp to windows 7. About 150 of those are just going to be swapped out with new machines since they cant be upgraded due to hardware reasons and the rest of the 50 will be just upgraded. So I want to make this as easy as possible for me and the company (it is a hospital). We need about 5 programs on all the systems and then there are some computer that need a few miscellaneous programs which I can install manually as its only a few. So basically I need one image which has those 5 programs which I can install on the new machines and upgrade from the old ones. No user data needs to be saved as I can save that manually as there are only about 10 that I would need to do that with. Any suggestions from people that have experience doing this and can help me out is appreciated.

403Forbidden

Well, does your network have WDS and PXE enabled systems? If so make a single image and then push it down to all the machines, including the fresh machines.

Any user data that you need to save you should use USMT for that, and probably script it to pull their data off of the machines and then another one to put it back, testing it before hand of course.

If you don't have WDS and or PXE enabled clients then it might be a bit of running around, but so long as you make an image that works as intended with all the necessary drivers and apps installed it should go smooth.

Manually installing all of the systems and applications will be a huge hassle and waste a bunch of time so I strongly suggest you don't do that. 1 machine, maybe 2 or 3 that's not a huge issue but not when we are talking about 50+.

Plan it all out carefully and make sure to back everything up FIRST on a network location or external hard drive if you can and test the back up first before proceeding. The worst thing you can do is get half way through a migration and then something goes wrong and user data is lost.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask.

Have fun,
403

N2IT

Absolutely agree with 403. Check and see if the hospital has a client technologies or end point management team who can capture an image. If this is an hospital leverage out the other departments and see if someone can help you with this. They may have a management system in place like SCCM or Altiris. If so that would be your best bet. You seem insecure which is okay, but I would think smarter not harder.

pixa241

N2IT wrote: »

Absolutely agree with 403. Check and see if the hospital has a client technologies or end point management team who can capture an image. If this is an hospital leverage out the other departments and see if someone can help you with this. They may have a management system in place like SCCM or Altiris. If so that would be your best bet. You seem insecure which is okay, but I would think smarter not harder.

Well they have an IT staff of 6 including me and to say the least only 3 of them know really what going on. One being a supervisor. One that I spoke to said he has a bunch of hard drives with windows images on them and what he normally does is hook it up to the new computer and just images it over to the new one. That just seems like a lot of work to me. They do not have Altiris. They do have windows server 2003 and 2008 and they were supposed to migrate the 2003 systems to 2008 today. Since this project will be mine and they dont really know whats going on I am trying to figure out how to do this. ON my work computer I have installed WAIK so far.

NetworkingStudent

This May Help for deploying the image.

Overview | fogproject.org


What is FOG?

FOG is a Linux-based, free and open source computer imaging solution for Windows XP, Vista and 7 that ties together a few open-source tools with a php-based web interface. FOG doesn't use any boot disks, or CDs; everything is done via TFTP and PXE. Also with fog many drivers are built into the kernel, so you don't really need to worry about drivers (unless there isn't a linux kernel driver for it). FOG also supports putting an image that came from a computer with a 80GB partition onto a machine with a 40GB hard drive as long as the data is less than 40GB.

What makes FOG different?
* FOG is easy for end user. The end user no longer needs to worry about NIC drivers to image a computer, this is all handled by the kernel. FOG management is done via an easy to use web GUI.

* FOG is centralized. Most of tasks done on FOG don't require the user to visit the client PC. For example if you imaging a computer all you need to do is start the task. After the task is started WOL will turn the computer on if it is off, PXE will load the OS, DHCP will give it an IP address, FOG will tell the server it is in progess, and PartImage will image your computer. Then when imaging is done FOG will tell PXE not to boot the machine to the fog image and your computer boots up. After the computer is booted, if the FOG service is installed, FOG will change the computer's hostname and that computer is ready to use!

* FOG is easy to access. All you need is a web browser to image a computer, no client software required. We have heard of organizations using FOG who image computers from an iPOD touch or iPhone.

* FOG is Powerful. With features like virus scanning, memory testing, disk wiping, testdisk, and file recovery, FOG does more than just imaging.

* FOG can grow with you. The FOG server can be broken down and run across multiple machines. For example, your NFS, apache, PXE, and DHCP services can all run on different servers to maximize performance.

* FOG is community driven. Is a feature missing in FOG that you would really love to see? If so, let us know and we will do our best to include it in FOG.

* FOG is well documented. The FOG WIKI contains a user guide which is over 50 pages long!

* FOG is free. Whether you have 2 computers or 20,000 computers in your organization, FOG is free!

403Forbidden

pixa241 wrote: »

Well they have an IT staff of 6 including me and to say the least only 3 of them know really what going on. One being a supervisor. One that I spoke to said he has a bunch of hard drives with windows images on them and what he normally does is hook it up to the new computer and just images it over to the new one. That just seems like a lot of work to me. They do not have Altiris. They do have windows server 2003 and 2008 and they were supposed to migrate the 2003 systems to 2008 today. Since this project will be mine and they dont really know whats going on I am trying to figure out how to do this. ON my work computer I have installed WAIK so far.

WAIK is a good start, it has the tools you'll need to get this done.
Nothing against FOG but in a hospital environment where security and HIPPA reign it is not a good idea to use a third party open source software to image and or maintain systems that will be used to store patient information and other Personal Identifiable Information.

Once you get WAIK installed the rest is pretty simple. On all the machines that have user data that needs to be saved pull that off of them using USMT from your server and save it to a networked location. Make sure the backups work. After that, you'll need a Windows PE disk with ImageX installed. (This can be a bootable cd or usb.) Grab a machined that will eventually be deployed and set it up the way you need it to be in the production environment and then sysprep it and pull an image using ImageX.

Once you have an image, try pushing it down to a machine using WDS and see if it works and if there are any bugs you need to work out. Once you're confident that you have all the kinks worked out then go ahead and go for wide scale deployment.

I am surprised that they still have not migrated to 2008 yet. Two people could easily get this done fairly quickly with the proper planning. As always DOCUMENT EVERYTHING. Every computer should have a location tied to it so you would write down the name of the computer along with where you took it from so that way when you reload the user profiles you'll load the right ones to the right place.

ajs1976

403Forbidden wrote: »

Nothing against FOG but in a hospital environment where security and HIPPA reign it is not a good idea to use a third party open source software to image and or maintain systems that will be used to store patient information and other Personal Identifiable Information.

Where did you come up with that?

403Forbidden

ajs1976 wrote: »

Where did you come up with that?

Previous work experience, my supervisor instructed me not to use any third party/open source software/utilities on any systems that would be used to store patient information as it is either frowned upon or directly violates HIPPA. If that is incorrect then it is incorrect. We were only allowed to use "Authorized" software which had to be published by "Authorized" companies that were in compliance.

I never looked too far into the specifics of it, being an Intern I took what was being told to me by the Project Manager to be truthful.

ajs1976

I worked for a Fortune 500 Health Insurance company and open source products were used and management was pretty strict when it comes to HIPPA so i doubt being open source automatically means that something violates HIPPA.

Typically I see the "open source is not secure" argument from a non-open source software vendor that is trying to discredit an open source alternative. As I get deeper and deeper into security, I keep coming across the counter argument that open source is more secure because the code is public allowing more people to review it for bugs and the bugs getting patched quicker.

Software authorization by a company can mean a lot more then just compliance. Is it from an approved vendor? You don't want to have a piece of software become an important part of your infrastructure only to have the vendor go out of business. Is it secure? Windows XP is currently on my approved list, but it will be removed in April, because I can no longer say it is secure. Is it licensed? You don't want to have an audit and find out that someone has been installing an unlicensed, cracked version of office on half of your computers.

Not saying that the Project Manager was untruthful. He cold have been interpreting the policy the way he understood it or maybe that is what the policy was actually based on. Its a good idea to learn the policies for yourself and to understand what they mean and their intent and not to always rely on what someone else is telling you.

JasonIT

+1 for FOG. My previous job was at an 1800 user healthcare facility. We used FOG on all our PC's. No HIPPA isuues at all, very good solution.