Vista Deployment

[leowyatt]

I need your help and advice.

We have 58 OEM HP machines which I need to deploy Vista on. I've been looking at using sysprep, BDD, WAIK, but wondered what you would all suggest.

Ideally I'd want unattended install so the user only enters the Product Key and the machine will join the domain and be ready for them to login and all other software will be published when they do.

I've been reading up on various guides but each describe different ways. Oh and this will be done from server 2003.

[Toby]

If you have a Server 2003 AD environment, I'd look into using Remote Installation Services (RIS) on the server to aid deployment to the new machines.

[leowyatt]

Hasn't RIS been replaced with WAIK?

[Toby]

You're right - didn't realise RIS had been replaced but it seems that it has been by Windows Deployment Services, which appears to come with or be integrated with WAIK.

I'm not familiar with either WDS or WAIK but used RIS a while back and presume they perform much the same function. Basically set up one machine how you want it, joined to the domain with any other relevant settings configured then image it to the server to allow rapid deployment to bare metal boxes across the network.

Must be the way to go IMHO.

[Daz]

We used RIS, and subsequently WDS. It's a more seamless process if you have volume licenses, so you get around product key issues and activation hiccups. Never really given us much trouble configuration wise, it's more the investment in thorough testing, especially getting all the right drivers in those images. A lot of time is wasted just waiting for installs to complete - do a few tests, wipe, rinse, repeat.

In terms of commercial software Altiris is very good, highly configurable. Not cheap though.

[Burble]

Symantec managed to do their usual thing when they bought Altiris. Jack up the prices and give god awful support. Yet another good company that is suffering since big yellow took over.

[leowyatt]

Sadly volume licences aren't an option as we already have the keys on here. I'll have a look into WDS and see what the choices are.

Does anyone have a guide on how to do this?

[leowyatt]

Bit of a thread revival but I know have this working. User presses F12 when booting their machine, selects the correct image and then boom they are joined on the domain with all required software assigned via AD :D \o/

[Chuckles]

What did you use?

I would have recommended Altris as well.

RIS used to hammer our network traffic if you people did more than 2 at once and I ended up having to stick a second NIC in the server and doing it through a different switch.

[leowyatt]

WDS :D

EDIT: It was actually quite simple in the end once I figured out the HP install images just ignore any unattended xml files. But now from power on to logon takes around 26 minutes per PC.