image deployment - flat or fat images
 

I am serioulsy thinking about moving from powerquest drive image to microsoft ris

at the moment we push out a 2k image with office 2k, ie6, departmental software etc etc but in the last year we have developed our sms server so we can now push all software remotly ( handy when we have 4 sites with 100 miles of tarmac between them )

we have got calls down from 300+ to under 70 most weeks ( yes sms is great )

but now I have set up a ris server and like the idea of imaging pc's remotely -even geting users to image there own pc's, Ris is great for this

now would you guys have a very basic image (only xp) then push the software via sms or keep to fat images

we only use dell pc's but need a image for each one ( gx1,gx80,150, 240,260,270,280) at the moment every small change to a image takes days to do, and images are my problem and all that change control that I thought was a good idea is back fireing ;)

come on guys what do you do :) all help wanted, just don't mention ghost :p

any one :)

We still use Ghost for the base image :p and Radia via security groups deploy the software and sort the regional settings.

Can Ris do images then? Last time I used Ris it ran the setup with an unattended config.

H

We use imagecasts multicast to do our machines, but only from base.

Not sure why we haven't tried using sms for this, I guess some of the slow remote sites (64k isdn) would be a nightmare!

And yes, sm sis great, about 50 secondary servers at all our remote sites makes things a lot easier :) Saves having to drive all the friggin way down to Cornwall to solve something simple!