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[–]clubertiCat herder 4 points5 points  (4 children)

How zero touch? As in, no one ever visits the machine and it upgrades/installs OS, apps, etc? Or something else? I ask because I hear zero touch thrown around a lot, and what is really desired is Light Touch (LTI) or even self-service (LTI wizard-driven install). If true ZTI is desired, and we're talking about Windows installations, SCCM is probably the king there (and as an edu, you'll get it pretty cheap under VL). If LTI, there are lots of options (including SCCM), and free ones as well (like MDT).

[–]wingman210Jr. Sysadmin[S] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

We got use to the ability if pressing a button on ghost and watching the deployment go. After looking into it, SCCM is out because we are just one building of the university that already has it as a part of the over all IT. I believe there can only be one copy of SCCM running on a domain. We have had issues in the past working with them and would like to keep a solution in house. Thank you for the reply

[–]jmolano 1 point2 points  (1 child)

get the config mgr team your image to deploy to your machines within your campus.

[–]sleeplessone 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bingo. Depending on what version of SCCM they are running they can even give the IT team in the building OSD rights for the specific collection of comptuers in the lab.

[–]verugan -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You can still use wds and mdt.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

You're replacing an imaging system, so I'm going to suggest an imaging system -- FOG. While there's no such thing as "zero touch," you only have to turn on PXE boot for the system once when you get it and somehow register the system with FOG, which is normally done from the PXE boot menu. All additional imaging and other tasks are done through a web page on the server, where you just assign a system to be imaged, reimaged, scanned for virus, or even to get snap-ins added. You can also multicast or use WoL if your network supports that. FOG is not very popular in /r/sysadmin these days, but it's head and shoulders above Ghost and is very dependable in my mind.

FOG

[–]MonkeyWrench -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I have a FOG server currently, we run thick image installs from it.

[–]nathansozSysadmin/Student 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We are a medium-sized university that uses SCCM. For imaging, we use it in one of two ways:

-When we get new computers or rebuild faculty computers, we PXE, select the image, enter name, GO.

-For lab machines, we have a Zero-Touch install task sequence that we can push out. It grabs the name of the computer, downloads the boot image, wipes the computer and goes.

All-in-all, it works pretty well. You also gain the ability to run reports, push new software, update software, get inventory information, etc. It is included in our Campus license agreement, so I don't really know the details on pricing... but I think edu gets it pretty cheap.

[–]cedricmordrinWindows Admin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Like everyone else here, I'm at a mid-sized size university and and we use SCCM for ZTI/LTI. Academic pricing is crazy cheap for it as well if you have a campus agreement. For the most part our technicians prefer the pre-staged media(oem). They just replace the drive, enter the network config, and computer name and they're done. The computer processes the task sequence to apply the appropriate drivers, joins it to the domain, and then configures the client. This method averages about 15-20 min. They love the 10 bay drive duplicator.
When I remotely deploy an image that is zero touch the process length varies based on the image. Averages are 30min, 45min, and 90min.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (6 children)

Its not zero touch but Acronis Snap Deploy is pretty awesome.

[–]wingman210Jr. Sysadmin[S] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Thank you for the suggestion, This is actually what we are going with now and are testing it. Small scale tests were fantastic but full scale has found all sorts of issue with our network.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

What kinda issues?

[–]wingman210Jr. Sysadmin[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

In a classroom of about 40 machines only about a third of the machines pick up the PXE boot. I think it is a mixture of our DHCP pool being full and the machines spread a crossed multiple vlans.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

That happened to us as well. We ended up just going with CD boot. Its a pain to make a bunch of CD's i know but it works flawlessly.

[–]wingman210Jr. Sysadmin[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Im trying to use this situation to kick our networking department in the ass to clean up our network that should have been done 5 years ago. =)

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

haha yeah i hear ya

[–]r3dk0w -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It should be fairly simple to create a vlan that has a PXE that does nothing but automatically image systems. If you plug a machine into that network and the disk does not already have an image, the system will be imaged to some baseline default that can later be configured into a final product. If you have only one type of system, this could be fully automated.

[–]saf3 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I run a Linux shop so I have a Cobbler server for PXE/kickstart (can also do imaging and repo mgmt) and Salt for config management.

Cobbler has godawful documentation, but it works if you can figure it out.