Configuring Many Desktops at Once

[myshtern]

If I need to configure lets say 10 desktops at once, I would configure the first one, make an image of the hard drive and then clone the other 9 hard drives, right?

Do all of them need to have the exact same hardware for this to work?

Anything in particular that would be unexpected or challenging?

[Bedlam]

You could do a few things to make this work, assuming you want to keep it legal, you could set the computers up in audit mode with a default installation. Otherwise, if the system hardware is different on the systems you may have some issue with everything working properly if you just ghost the drives or something.

Anyway you can check out this technet article that talks about it.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/e1ed6a83-a5b5-41e6-a088-2eb9d64a4b7e1033.mspx?mfr=true

[STIBungy]

If you made an image to clone the other 9, they would have to have the same core hardware, such as motherboard, hd controller, number of processors. Each machine will then need to have a unique SID.

[myshtern]

If you made an image to clone the other 9, they would have to have the same core hardware, such as motherboard, hd controller, number of processors. Each machine will then need to have a unique SID.
So basically the job would be a giant PITA if the hardware wasnt identical?

I just read a little bit on the microsoft website about SIDs and my understanding is that it only relates if I'm networking them together and using microsoft database tools? Do I need to know about SIDs if they wont be networked together?

[john]

My employer sells a product which does this, but for only 10 systems it'd be overkill. It can do a bare metal restore to non-similar hardware.

[Nate]

So basically the job would be a giant PITA if the hardware wasnt identical?

I just read a little bit on the microsoft website about SIDs and my understanding is that it only relates if I'm networking them together and using microsoft database tools? Do I need to know about SIDs if they wont be networked together?


If your main motherboard hardware is not the same then a normal product won't work well. It can usually fix most things that require a driver.

If they won't be networked then it isn't a big deal, and even if they are you will most likely still function if you are using strictly domain user accounts. The SIDs are more related to individual computers understanding eachother's local accounts.

John, couldn't he use the eval for 30 days and get it done one time? I'm guessing you are talking about Backup Exec System Recovery. Depending on how different the hardware is it may still take a little knowledge to get it going.

[myshtern]

Okay, so I just need to save myself the headache and make sure they are all identical hardware wise.

What cloning/imaging program would you recommend?

[STIBungy]

When I did IT stuff, I wrote a program to boot the computers onto the network and use Ghost to install the images from a network drive. After installing the image, the program would run Ghostwalker to create a unique SID.

I'm sure there's better software out there, nowadays.

[Bedlam]

Okay, so I just need to save myself the headache and make sure they are all identical hardware wise.

What cloning/imaging program would you recommend?

Use the OEM pre-instalation kit setup and then make an image of that disk. First time boot each computer it will ask you to put in the security indentifiers for each computer and you can go from there. I'd definately use norton ghost to make mass images like that, its pretty easy.