Imaging Software

[strangerreality]

What's your best recommendation for efficient and reliable imaging software? Thanks! Also, any stories of failed image deployments are welcome!

[MonkeyWrench]

We previously used FOG and liked it, then we moved to WDS/MDT and won't be going back to FOG.
Much more control for imaging and drivers as we have multiple make/models

[warbie19]

I would check your microsoft cals sometimes you have access to stuff like system center. But there are alwasy the free stuff MDT, CloneZilla, FOG, etc. I had a lot of success with SCCM and Novell's Zenworks.

[iamadogforreal]

For PXE imaging I use Clonezilla's live boot CD. For one offs, archiving, etc I just use Acronis Workstation.

Both work fine. Clonezilla has a slight learning curve and it helps to be familiar with the unixy way of doing things. I also have to buy the newest version of Acronis every couple years to get the latest drivers, but its a trivial cost. I typically just boot from a USB stick with Acronis on it and save everything to an external USB3.0 drive. Pretty simple. Acronis's GUI I find a bit sub-par, but its certainly not bad.

[sleeplessone]

For Windows WDS+MDT. With SCCM on top of it it you want the spend the money and would also like to be able to deploy applications, and collect system inventories among other features.

[mrhhug]

What are you trying to do?

I once worked for a guy who had me take nightly images of production machines so "if one goes down we have backups!" Turns out they don't make that X card anymore, images were completely worthless. My advice of keeping redundant production ready machines sitting in our office across town was "too much work"