OS deployment

[Mac_dm]

I was wondering what everyone uses for thier OS deployment. My company uses Ghost right now and it is not very affective. I have been doing some research on SMS OS depoyment pack. I work for a University that has to reimage laps all the time. I am trying to find a solution that will be more zero touch then our current solution...

[Big Booger]

http://www.microsoft.com/smserver/downloads/2003/osdfp.mspx

That is what the IT peeps at my work use only it's in Japanese.

You might be interested in an unattended Installation:

http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/

Pop the disk in and zip zoom fly. You can even tweak it out a bit adding extra programs, removing features, all done without you even having to click anything.

nlite is a tool for unintended installations:
http://www.nliteos.com/

[phishhead]

our company also uses ghost. what issues are you having and what version. We use 9 and I havent noticed any real issues. It craps out sometimes but thats usually caused by corruption over the network. at home I use drive image because its very simple and since my girl will be using it I thought should be fast and easy so she will keep doing her backups.

[Mac_dm]

I am not really sure what issues they are having because I am not the one trying to image these labs over and over again. I do know that the agent on the client machines have to be reinstalled alot. I was just told that Ghost was not working as a solution and that I needed to look into a new one. I thought about SMS or RIS. But RIS doesn't seem to be able to push images to clients. It seems to just be able to Network Boot. They are looking for something that will "re-image" with zero touch, remotely....

[phishhead]

not sure about the client but all you need is the ghost.exe, image, and network driver on the cd and then boot from cd and reimage it.

[cash_site]

Also, wasnt there a GhostCast Server, that pushed / pulled images across networks. Zero touch for client, and 1 click for the SYSAdmin ;)