Deployment

zetec452

zetec452

zetec452

Soldato
Joined
15 Sep 2003
Posts
9,454
Hey,

I'm looking at a deployment project.

I have machines of varying manufactures' and chip sets in which I would like to try and automate Windows XP deployment for. I cannot use PXE boot or anything over the network but can use CD / USB pen. These are requirements in which cannot be elaborated on. We currently image these machines but with varying software versions it has become quite unmanageable.

My current idea was to nlite XP and incorporate the drivers for the machines onto the CD and kick installations off once XP was installed. However this appears to be a little hit and miss with conflicting drivers and can take a while as the machines are not always of a high specification.

Any other suggestions or ideas for me to investigate would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Jon
 
Or could try and install on one machine and move it to another. See if it boots, then add the drivers needed. Or have a look at SYSPREP.

If that doesn't work, nLite will be your friend!
 
If they are going to be dumb enough to place such a restriction on you then gather one of each machine and make an nlite cd for each type of machine, with the drivers for each machine on the nlite cd.
 
mdjmcnally said:
If they are going to be dumb enough to place such a restriction on you then gather one of each machine and make an nlite cd for each type of machine, with the drivers for each machine on the nlite cd.
Click to expand...

Have to agree. You're better off taking a laptop and switch around with you and imaging off the laptop to multiple machines to be honest.
 
mdjmcnally said:
If they are going to be dumb enough to place such a restriction on you then gather one of each machine and make an nlite cd for each type of machine, with the drivers for each machine on the nlite cd.
Click to expand...

The restriction is in place as there are over 18000 of these units around the world in which need setting up periodically and do not have local servers for PXE boot.

nlite is good and I have been using this with sysprep however I need to reduce the amount of media we have to setup machines. This is probably the only route and I'm open to other suggestions.
 
You could use 1 nLite'd install on DVD for all the machines. You could also set it to automate the install. That would work!
 
Thats the idea at the moment but I am having driver issues as their are so many. Plus the machines generally don't have DVD's. :o.

Tis all fun though.
 
Might be worth just adding the storage controller drivers to the install. Then add seperate folders on the root of the DVD for the rest. Bit of a faff, but if it installs, all is good!

Maybe time to get some .bat files running ;)
 
I know you can install windows from a USB HDD, but would it be possible to add more than 1 image of windows onto the drive? basically a similar thing to the DVD with various versions of windows + drivers but on a HDD instead?

If it works, it gets you round the lack of DVD drives on some of these machines you mentioned :)

it's a shame its not like vista/win 7, there was a great post in Windows and other software about integrating various versions of the OS into a single DVD and you just select the one you want. That might have been pretty useful
 
Last edited:
cokecan72 said:
I know you can install windows from a USB HDD, but would it be possible to add more than 1 image of windows onto the drive? basically a similar thing to the DVD with various versions of windows + drivers but on a HDD instead?
Click to expand...
It is possible to do this, but it's not easy nor fun to get it working. There are lots of guides on the web that explain how to do it.

it's a shame its not like vista/win 7, there was a great post in Windows and other software about integrating various versions of the OS into a single DVD and you just select the one you want. That might have been pretty useful
Click to expand...
This is also possible, but it is awkward to do at best. Here is an example guide: http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-create-multi-os-cd.htm

Personally I'd go down the nLite route and try to integrate as many of the required drivers as possible, and use batch files to install applications.
 
We already use extensive batch files and programs to install our applications after. Most of the chipsets are installed via xp anyway (mainly ATA and SATA drives and intel chipsets). As long as the NIC drivers are in order I should be ok.

The USB boot will be out as we have some old machines that won't boot from USB. :(.

Thanks for the ideas though, everything is worth looking into. :)
 
umm. After getting four machines to work on one xp disk I was asked about the license restrictions of nlite. Unfortunately as nlite is only licensed for personal use and is therefore out. :(.

Despite this I feel I can conjure something up using sysprep and driver installation software. Not all bad but a bit of a pain.
 
I think they really need to think about how you deploy windows in the future. All this messing about with boot cds and various drivers will end up being unmanagable. They should be considering having a WDS server at each site, or FOG (Free Opensource Ghost) if the don't want to fork out for licesing.
 
JonRohan said:
umm. After getting four machines to work on one xp disk I was asked about the license restrictions of nlite. Unfortunately as nlite is only licensed for personal use and is therefore out. :(.

Despite this I feel I can conjure something up using sysprep and driver installation software. Not all bad but a bit of a pain.
Click to expand...

yay, only 17,996 clients to go :)

18,000 machines to manage and what seems to be no budget available for a proper solution? I'd be having a word with someone tbh...

A paid up deployment product would probably pay for itself with the time and effort it would save.

And with that many clients you should get a good deal on licensing :)
 
Last edited:
Ev0 said:
18,000 machines to manage and what seems to be no budget available for a proper solution? I'd be having a word with someone tbh...

A paid up deployment product would probably pay for itself with the time and effort it would save.

And with that many clients you should get a good deal on licensing :)
Click to expand...

Exactly what I was going to say, I've been in your position before (though not on quite such a large scale).
You are doing your best on a budget of 0, but in this case I think you've reached the limit of what can be achieved.

Someone is going to have to fork out some cash for a proper deployment solution or you are basically doomed to failure.

I have some further questions that may prompt a better response:

What do you use to push out your apps afterwards?

It sounds like there is no central purchasing system, so each branch office just orders their own kit, is this the case?
 
Last edited:
Also starts to ask the question what do you use to manage your machines for things like software asset management, patching etc :)
 
This is not about money or software here. These machines are ATMs and cannot be PXE booted or provisioned via software on site due to security reasons and protocol from banks.

Once the software is installed the machines are patched and managed via our software through the banks IT staff.

An engineer needs to go to site with the ATM, set it up, stick a few cds in and have it ready. No PXE, no ghost no nothing. Just cd's. We don't manage the engineers and they have very limited "IT" knowledge and therefore have to be fairly blind to the installation process.

See the issue now? ;)
 
That does simplify things somewhat, as I assume you have no requirement for drivers other than mass storage, and LAN?

In which case, provided the mass storage drivers are included with XP, that only leaves the question of LAN drivers. Do you know exactly which drivers are needed, even if it is a list of 100?

My post here may be able to be shoehorned to do what you want.
Instead of using add-on images, you can just make the changes to sysprep.inf, create a structure for all the drivers for the different models, and leave them on the base image.

I'm certain with Ghost, Acronis, etc you can script the imaging of the machine, so that engineers don't need to do anything. and I'm pretty sure the image can be spanned across CD's meaning the image size isn't a direct issue, but the time taken to image will be.
You're going to need to streamline your image as much as possible, and without using nLite, I'm uncertain how easy that will be.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom