[Huzz]

Hello again,

Well this year we have a project to install vista ,office 2007 other latest softwares to 400 plus computers.We have wide range of HP series from 100-600 series ans some imacs.

Previsous years we had to make different clone image for different series accordinly.So will vista support one master image so its easy to clone all the pc.so any suggestion on that matter as i am kinda not exprience in clonning.

any other suggestion on regards to vista for the whole network will be much appriciate.

We have to basically make a test domain n test all the series and different software and hardwares.

looking forward for the suggestions

Cheers

[Advertisements]

Hello, and welcome to Geeks To Go.
Are you doing a school project?
Where did you buy the copy of Vista, This is relevant.

[hfcg]

Hello, and welcome to Geeks To Go.
Are you doing a school project?
Where did you buy the copy of Vista, This is relevant.

[starjax]

Huzz,

Microsoft has made a number of tools and papers available this past few weeks regarding Vista deployment. This also includes tool for management.

http://www.google.co...amp;btnG=Search

that should generate a number of relevant articles.

As to best practices, I don't have any info to pass on. I helped develop a deployment solution for a large company (windows xp), but that process would need to be reengineered for vista almost entirely. I no longer work in that capacity.

In addition Ghost Solution Suite or Acronis (recommended) have lots of info available.

[Huzz]

Hello, and welcome to Geeks To Go.
Are you doing a school project?
Where did you buy the copy of Vista, This is relevant.

yea i am doing a school project ! nad how did you know.

Well we have bought it from a local reseller, at the moment we havnt bought the enterprise License but soon we will get it.

[pip22]

Hi Huzz

Cloning an installed OS is relatively easy (I do it at least once a week) but the PC on which you create the clone must have a second hard disk with free space equal to or greater than than the OS disk, or an empty partition same size or larger than the OS partition. This second disk/partition is required for the clone to be written to.

As for the actual cloning software, I can only recommend what I use on a regular basis and which works for me, and that's 'Norton Ghost' (just about the only Norton product that's worth spending money on).

One other important point. Cloning to other computers will only work error-free if those computers are all the same spec internally (ie same internal hardware) as the computer on which the clone was created (the 'donor' computer). That means specifically any internal hardware which uses a device driver, as these drivers will be within the operating system itself (and therefore also within the clone). Any mismatch of driver & device when the clone is installed on a 'target' PC which isn't exactly the same spec will likely produce errors which will have to be dealt with. It doesn't necessarily mean the clone-transfer will fail but it just won't be totally error-free if their are differences in spec./driver requirements.

Driver-less components (CPU,RAM etc.) across a batch of computers do not necessarily have to match those within the 'donor' computer in this context.

Edited by pip22, 22 February 2008 - 01:15 PM.

[Huzz]

hey pip22,

Thanks

Well we just need to replace the XP , so why do we need another hard disk.

another thing, i think my collegue used "CloneZilla" last year to do the cloning.so , Is Norton Ghost bette than that?

I guess will try now soon in our testdomain.

Thanks again.

[starjax]

Pip's method is just a different way of doing cloning.

I don't know anything about clonezilla. However, ghost is the enterprise standard in cloning computers.

This is what I do for deploying images in a networked environment;

1)create the image and prepare it for cloning

1b)place said image on an available network resource

2)create an os bootable cd (win pe, bart pe, or a symantec ghost created boot cd). This is so I can boot to the network and ghost the image to/from system

so what you need to do is build an image, prepare it for cloning. In MS syntax this means run sysprep (this is where you will spend the bulk of your time). Then clone and test your image.