Best Practices for Imaging to Remote Offices

[rokan]

We have a number of offices in Europe, South America, and Asia and having them pull the image file from our US office can be difficult.

Is there a recommended method of imaging to remote offices? It seems a bit impractical to create a full imaging USB and sending it out to the remote offices each time we update the image, so can the image file be staged on a local share so they can deploy a workstation and pull the image file locally rather than across the world?

Thanks  in advance for the assistance,

Roger

[SmartDeploySupport]

Hi Roger,

Staging the image on a local network share is definitely a recommended option. SmartDeploy is licensed per target device, so if it makes practical sense to actually create the images at each local office on their own SmartDeploy setup, you could do that without consuming an additional license for each SmartDeploy workstation (just for any client devices deployed using media created from those workstations).

Conversely, if it's more practical to create the image(s) at a central office, you would need to get the image to each of your branch offices, which would involve the transfer of a 5-8GB .wim file initially. But when it comes time to update the image, you could use differencing WIMs. This is an option in Capture Wizard, and is intended for when you make changes to the same virtual machine from which you captured the original WIM. You would select "Differencing WIM", and point to the original WIM that you captured earlier. Then Capture Wizard will create a smaller (.DWM) file, which only contains any files which have changed since the original WIM was captured. This way, you would only have to distribute the smaller file for each update. At deployment time, you would only need the original WIM, and the most recent DWM (there's no requirement to hold onto the others). The .DWMs would obviously get bigger over time as the virtual machine diverges further from the original WIM, so you would probably eventually want to capture and transfer an entirely new WIM to each office - but this method would allow you to decrease the frequency of such large-file transfers.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out - support (at) smartdeploy.com.

 

 

SmartDeploy Support Team

 

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[rokan]

To be sure I understand the first option, for example, our Brazil office could install SmartDelpoy and unlock it with our license key. Brazil can then build and create image files, download package files, create bootable media, etc. specific to the Brazil office, and the licenses for the images they deploy in Brazil would be taken from the number we purchased under our license key. We could run the license report and see what has been deployed for the Brazil office, as well as well as, our main office in the US. Is that correct?

If so, I am then assuming the computers that are seen under Computer Management would only show the computers deployed for that particular office's SmartDeploy installation and could not be seen by any office that is using our license key, thus Brazil would only see Brazil deployed computers and the US would only see US deployed computers in their respective SmartDeploy Computer Management views. Is that correct?

Thanks again for  the assistance,

Roger

[SmartDeploySupport]

 

4 minutes ago, rokan said:

To be sure I understand the first option, for example, our Brazil office could install SmartDelpoy and unlock it with our license key. Brazil can then build and create image files, download package files, create bootable media, etc. specific to the Brazil office, and the licenses for the images they deploy in Brazil would be taken from the number we purchased under our license key. We could run the license report and see what has been deployed for the Brazil office, as well as well as, our main office in the US. Is that correct?

Correct on all counts. If you set up multiple SmartDeploy workstations (at different locations, or even at the same location) with the same license key, any devices that you deploy using SmartDeploy media created on either of those workstations would count toward your license total.

5 minutes ago, rokan said:

If so, I am then assuming the computers that are seen under Computer Management would only show the computers deployed for that particular office's SmartDeploy installation and could not be seen by any office that is using our license key, thus Brazil would only see Brazil deployed computers and the US would only see US deployed computers in their respective SmartDeploy Computer Management views. Is that correct?

What you're describing is the recommended setup, yes. When you install the SmartDeploy push client (which is an option in the Deploy Wizard advanced options), you would specify a hostname or IP address for the SmartDeploy console that those devices will communicate with. Depending on your network architecture, it's conceivable that you could point all of your devices to the same SmartDeploy console and initiate deployments from them (you would need to test this setup to be sure), but we would recommend pushing separate deployment packages to each office's devices, which point to a network location that's actually at the office where the device will be deployed.

Computer Management does allow you to arrange computers in groups. So if your testing determines that you can initiate deployment commands from one location at another, you could select (or multiselect) all of the Brazil devices and initiate deployment of the "Windows 7 - Brazil" deployment package (pointing to a .wim file located on \\BrazilServer), then select all of the US devices and initiate deployment of "Windows 7 - USA" (located on \\USAServer), etc.

May be easier to just set up separate SmartDeploy workstations at each office - but that just depends on your preferences and infrastructure.

Please let us know if we can assist with anything else.

SmartDeploy Support Team

 

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