On Computer Imaging (Solved, Please lock <3 ).

Enc

The tech support at our corporation has been working with us by making images of our computers, but has been giving us grief over a series of new computers we bought that are the exact same line as the previous machines only one model newer.

My question here: how difficult is it really to create an image of a slightly newer machine? Our office is being sold that this is several weeks worth of work and a lot of grief, which seems very wonky as they currently support several dozen other models.

EclecticGroove

It depends. If it's all the same hardware not that much of a problem. But for every piece of hardware in any given model that is different they need to update the image with the drivers for it or test to ensure the generic windows drivers are sufficient.

Anything that is on those new models that MUST work needs to be tested. It can be anywhere from no work at all other than imaging those models a few times to verify nothing important breaks to a huge effort if they run into major problems.

Spudge

In my experience (with Ghost), it takes on average 3 hours to create one image

If the machines you have that are newer still use the same processor, chipset and board families, then the drivers for both machines can be slipstreamed into one image. Then it's just a matter of installing the specific driverset on each imaging.

Ex: Dell OptiPlex systems. We had one image used for OPs GX240, 260, 270 and 280, because they're the same family - P4, Intel chipset, same family of Foxconn mobos. Since the 620 (new at the time) had a new processor architecture and chipset, the other OP image wouldn't work at all.

rockmonkey

Even if it were new hardware and a separate, new image needed to be made it would simply be a case of (like Spudge said) about 3 hours with ghost or whatever they are using to create an image from one of the new machines, name it, and bam you're done. Then in the future when they go to image a machine they select from the list which image is appropriate for that model. When I was using ghost for Dell OptiPlex systems and working at a school district (5+ years ago mind you) we had a whole LIST of different images. Each lab had different software that they used so each lab had their own image. Sure they were all variations built off a "basic" image, but it never took much time at all, in fact back then with our image sizes what they were I don't remember ghost taking but around an hour to create an new image.

Heck we even went to remote imaging for things that were on the other side of town. I'd sit in the office and remote image a desktop across town and it would be done in no time something like 20 minutes if I can remember correctly, but that's for loading the image onto the machine not making one.

No way would this ever be "several weeks" of work or even a single week of work. I can see it MAYBE stretching to 1 persons full day, maybe, if you factor in travel time between different sites/offices and having some scripts or something that they used in conjunction with the images and thus those had to be updated. Best case 2-3 hours of work for 1 guy. Worst case 6-8 hours for 1 guy.

Enc

So, in the consideration of them all (new and old alike) all being Optiplex, so sharing most of the same components, and the Tech Support being housed on site, the timeline here is way off, correct?

Gilbert0

Weeks is way off but it could be a day or two. Again it depends. You say it's one model newer. What is new in that model? If the new model all have slightly bigger hard drives and that's all, the exisiting image would work. If the new model has new motherboard, new processor, new video (ie brand new machine) but is just NAMED in the same family, it shouldn't take 1 guy more than a day to set up.

To "image" a computer, you take that model, install windows with everything you want on it (patches, office, etc), load the imaging softwae and go "Save as...". The length of time is setting up windows, not with the imaging software itself. The save should take like a hour.

Spudge

It also depends on how fully-featured these images are. If he's just making a basic Windows image (so software is installed later) it literally takes no time at all. Install, configure, write image. If he feels he needs to have separate images with specific software installed for different departments, then that could take some time

A real easy way to remove the latter from the picture is to have an automated package installer. Don't know if you guys have that, but if you have a lot of differing software that needs to be installed on different machines, it's a shitton easier and faster than manually configuring for each install

Ruckus

Another aspect to Image creation that may or may not apply to your situation is documentation. Depending on the industry you work in, you IT department may have to conformance test every platform will all of it's software. These tests can be as basic as "does it install without errors" or as elaborate as multiple scenario test scripts that have to be successfully completed and signed off by multiple people prior to implementation. I have certain computers where I work that I have a hot spare for, and just swapping the serial cable from the original to the hot spare requires an hour of testing and documentation before it can resume production. The documentation also requires signoffs from a Manager, a Director, and a Quality Assurance team member.

Bigtoy_J

Our group has had similar issues with new systems being incompatible with the images of older machines. In those cases we do have to go through a day or two if installation (OS, tool sets, etc) and several tests to make sure that the system is performing correctly. After that we create a new image and we are off to the races.

Something to consider if you do have to go that route is to look into desktop virtualization. Grab a copy of VirtualBox (FOSS) and get your system working on it. The nice thing about Virtualbox and its ilk is that you can take a snapshot of your desktop environment and quickly move it over to another machine. You do take a hit on efficiency when using virtualization, but unless you are performing extremely heavy processing the loss of overall efficiency may be made up for by the ability to quickly move from one machine to another.

Enc

Unfortunately, we have no control over how they go about doing things, just if we accept their support or not. The time frame seemed unreasonable, so I wanted to check and see if it was. Thanks for giving me a good idea of what is common for this sort of thing, it's likely that the personalities involved are just not happy about doing the additional work required for the better machines.

Ceres, this thread can be locked now. Thanks again everyone!