Enterprise Computer Imaging Tools?

spool32

Hey folks, I'm kicking off a project at work to select and roll out some kind of imaging system for the support team to use, and I thought I'd ping the sysadmins here to see what their preferred PC imaging tool is.

What should I look at, for a corporate AD network with mostly Windows 7 and 10 workstations?

Reznik

We use this: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/dn475741.aspx

I have never set up MDT itself but I have imaged like 200 computers with it. It is very easy and straightforward and reliable.

DevoutlyApathetic

You might also find useful information over here in the PA sysadmins thread. Since, ya know, your employed as one again.

spool32

I cannot tell you how good it feels to say "I'm doing $thing at work"

Holy shit. :biggrin:

Donkey Kong

I'm not an IT but my company uses MDT as well. They used to use something by Acronis but stopped because it was pointlessly expensive.

Ludious

We use Symantec Ghost. I quite like it but I also have had no reason to explore other options. We have a laptop serving as a ghostcast server with an external usb drive for the various images hooked to a switch on a long table. We can do 20 or so laptops at a time and are only limited by physical space.

bowen

I use http://clonezilla.org/

Disk/partition level cloning though, so, may not fit how you want it to. I set up a base image without a key, do updates, and reexport it out then load the image (takes about 10 minutes tops) from the network share then add a key, activate it, and join to the domain.

TL DR

+1 vote for the sysadmin thread. Otherwise, knowing your budget and number of workstations would be helpful. We use Acronis, mostly because it's included with our Kaseya licensing, but Clonezilla would be a decent competitor if you just need image new or FUBAR'd PCs and update a base image from time to time.

MDT looks interesting, though. I have a ~40 PC deployment coming up, and though I could make the intern image them all manually, I'll look into that solution.

Aioua

Are WDS servers part of the MDT?

I've never had to design the infra on the back end, but as a user of that infra I love being able to PXE boot off of a WDS server and kick off an install. Install media is dumb.

Reznik

MDT can be used with WDS, yes (also with SCCM)

Feral

MDT & WDS here with PXE.

We use some *NIX OSes at the server level but those are all virtualized, so just using VMware's native template/clone/snapshot tools is fine for that.

For forensic imaging (which is a slightly different ball of wax than deployment imaging) I use FTK Imager.

Feral

This is slightly outside the scope of your question, but you might find it helpful: at home & for friends I use Ultimate Boot CD (on a USB stick) for Clonezilla & Parted Magic.

AngelHedgie

TL DR wrote: »

+1 vote for the sysadmin thread. Otherwise, knowing your budget and number of workstations would be helpful. We use Acronis, mostly because it's included with our Kaseya licensing, but Clonezilla would be a decent competitor if you just need image new or FUBAR'd PCs and update a base image from time to time.

MDT looks interesting, though. I have a ~40 PC deployment coming up, and though I could make the intern image them all manually, I'll look into that solution.

Aww, it'll develop character in your intern.