Network unattended

[p4ntb0y]

Guys I would like your input on this scenrio..

How to deploy Windows XP to 250 sites with the biggest site being around 500 and the smallest at 3.

Now I have bad bandwidth problems ie between 2mb and 64k between sites. each site has a DC by the way.

My enviro is mixed with intel and AMD boxes all HP and DELL.

I am currently looking into TFTP which is running fine and I am booting BARTPE Currently on the boxes (yet to intergrate all the NIC drivers and mass storage drivers) I will have to use winpe later (How small could the winpe image be?)

I am using winpe at the moment to get me to the 32bit mode and would like to run the mac address against a database for the computer naming.

I could go image based but I will have problems maybe with the mass storage device drivers (Maybe run devcon to get that info and inject on the fly) The HAL will be a problem or I could use the NTLDR in VISTA BETA 1 and detect the new HAL (I have been told that VISTA will have only one HAL is this correct?).

has anyone had these problems before?

what do you think is the best solution?

I will add more after the posts start off

[InTheWayBoy]

RIS on each of the local DC's. Check the RIS subforum for more info on that subject.

As far as making sure all the DC's have the same installs that is where something like DFS might help out, but I can't comment on how to setup or configure that.

And from what I read on the Vista installation there will be two HALs...32 and 64 bit. But each of those will fully cover their respective installations.

It's kinda neat, you make a base image and then inject the extra drivers you need into the image. All that is happening is that the drivers are put in predetermined places, much like the $OEM$ folder idea. But I guess the finally made it automated so the imaging process will always process the files each time. So you can add or remove all you like. I only wish this would be backported or whatever to XP...we can only hope.

[p4ntb0y]

RIS you say ok maybe.........

A what is best to deploy an image of winpe with ADO support and WSH maybe or just an unattended?

How long will it take say if I have 500 machines and they are all on 100mb?

DFS don't really want to go that route.

But I can use SMS2003 so thats not a problem.

once PXE booted I need to boot to an image of boot somehow whats best for this?

I see the BDD way to do it but everyone seems to go image based deployment.

I rather go file based so say that a patch comes out I can just SMS it to all my sites in the distro folder in the svc folder so any new machines will be up to date then all I have to do is send a update out to the machines that do not have it.

Some sites I do not control the IP addressing or DHCP I have to provide a mac address for these sites.

Is anyone using the BDD?

[tguy]

Do a search on Dell Computer's support site for single or one server image. They have a whitepaper on how to create a single image for their hardware.

Sorry I don't remember the URL off the top of my head. It does exist. If you can't find it, send me a PM and I will see if I can find my copy of the .PDF and I'll send it to you.

Good luck.