WDS alternative?

[Kenneth Eriksen]

Hi

Have just been testing SmartDeploy for a week now and must say; i'm impressed..!

Coming from Symantec Ghost, this is a big leap that would make my co-workers very happy with me..!

I do have a few questions:

During trial we have successfully created a USB boot media, that fetch the golden WIM and the necessary platfom packs from a file share on a server.

Very straight forward and this works like a charm.

Now the time has come to shut down our trusted old Ghost server, which also served as PXE / TFTP-server for deploying a boot image.

1) We might wan't to keep SmartDeploy as a "low key" deployment system, and try to avoid WDS, is there a good alternative to this..?

Maybe a simple PXE / TFTP server on the file share server?

2) Will a simple file share with the WIM and the platform packs, handle multiple and simultaneous deployments of the WIM and the platform packs..?

(Maybe 5 or 10 at the time)

3) IF we go for the WDS, i can't figure out where and when the platform packs are added to the install image.

It's obvious that they are injected to the boot image, but that's only drivers for network and HDD controller. Are the complete set of drivers for windows pulled from a network share afterwards (designated in XML)?

Hoping for some good inputs - thanks..

//Kenneth

[SmartDeploySupport]

Hello,

Thanks for taking the time to evaluate SmartDeploy!

Currently, to PXE boot to the SmartDeploy boot environment you will have to integrate with WDS. We are working on integrating our own PXE server into SmartDeploy but it's still in the Dev/Test phase, but it should be released in the near future. A simple file share will work with simultaneous deployments under 25 machines. If you're deploying 25+ machines at the same time, you will want to use WDS.

If you do decide to use WDS you will want to place your platform packs in the \\WdsServer\reminst\Images\ImageGroup folder. In the same location as your install image. By default the Deploy Wizard looks in the same location as your image for the correct platform pack. If you choose to store your packs in a different location you can browse to that location via the Advanced options in the Deploy Wizard.

Thanks,

SmartDeploy Support

[Kenneth Eriksen]

Hi and thank you for the quick reply..

Hmm.. I'll think i give WDS a go tomorrow..

This may be a noob question, but can you have more than one image (both a Win7 and a Win10) under/in the same ImageGroup folder to make them share the platform packs, or do you need to have a set of PP's for each image in each ImageGoup folder.?

Or can you just edit the corresponding XML file to point at the same file share containing the platform packs..?

Thanks again..

//Kenneth

[SmartDeploySupport]

Kenneth,

You can have multiple OS images in your ImageGroup. As long as the platform packs in that location support all operating systems, you will be fine.

Thanks,

SmartDeploy Support