I know you are probably thinking, “What is the daily update nonsense? I haven’t seen a blog post in months!”. Well, you are right. There hasn’t been much in the way of posting here recently. My previous…ahem…free…hosting provider decided to discontinue service so I was forced to backup and search for a new one. After months of procrastination, I finally settled on FatCow and transferred the site. So far, I am very pleased with the service and hope it continues.
So, I would like to give a daily update here, with just a few paragraphs describing what is going on, mostly professionally, with a few personal tidbits here and there. Not much technical detail will be given in these posts, but I am hoping they will spur some dialogue with my readers.
I have been working pretty diligently lately on creating a hardware independent disaster recovery(DR) image for our upcoming DR test. The goals I set for myself when starting this project were:
- Image must be able to handle different Hardware Abstraction Layers(HAL)
- Image must be able to connect to the network and have an acceptable screen resolution on first run
- Image must have all necessary software required for a DR scenario installed and working
- The Imaging process should be simple enough that a non-technical person can perform the process
The bar has been set pretty high by the nice gentlemen previously in my job and his work is really good, but since our environment has changed so much since the last test, it’s necessary for me to redo the entire thing. After putting in a few days on this project, I have settled on at least a few tools to accomplish it:
- Use Windows 7. Even though we are still stuck on XP, I feel I can customize the OS to a certain point that our users aren’t taken off-guard when they first boot up. Since I haven’t found a cheap and effective way to use a single Windows XP Image on multiple HALs, I decided Windows 7 was the way to go.
- Use a customized Windows PE boot image to deploy the image with GImageX. I have been pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to setup a WinPE image.
- Use Windows Deployment Services(WDS) for the deployment of the images with a bootable WinPE DVD as backup. I really like WDS as a deployment platform and would prefer to use it in a DR scenario if the server and network are available before the workstations are deployed. A DVD deployment method will be used just in case they aren’t.
All of this research and testing I have been doing have gotten me thinking that I should write about these things here so expect a several part blog post soon explaining the process from WDS setup to final image deployment. I hope to have the first post up within a few days. In the meantime, do any of you have any interesting deployment scenarios you would like to share? What do you think about the direction I am taking so far with my project?
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I use Clonezilla Server for my images and PXE boot them to grab the image from the server. I do love the fact that Windows 7 just goes out and grabs the driver from windowsupdate but the problem is still that you must have an internet connection for that to happen. In the case of a DR your network might not be up to speed and having X-amount of computers going out to the web might cause huge bandwidth problems. Not to mention if your software isn’t fully tested on Win7 you can run into problems. In DR situation are you talking about short term relocation and using a company like Sungard for their computers? If you are talking about complete rebuilds just create a base image and have your pc vendor image them before they hit your building. Write a script to join to the domain and change computer name on first boot.
Hey Craig! I am actually going to embed the drivers I need into the image. I already have a large driver repository that covers almost all Dell Workstations. All I need to do is start adding the HP drivers. So there won’t be any need for windows update for drivers. Also, if I do miss a driver, Sunguard will have a tech on site with all the drivers needed.
I already have a functioning Windows 7 install with all the required software running without problems. It was a challenge getting it all installed and running. I had to use some interesting workarounds on some of it.
We don’t have a set PC vendor. We seem to buy based on price only here so 1 order will be all Dell’s when the next will be all HPs.
Hey man! Good to have you back. I just did a Win7 seminar and I love what this OS brings to the table. We needed a succession plan for XP and Vista will not work with some of our library specific apps. FAIL.
Win7 looks like the way to go, especially with the XP mode and compatibility. It’s everything Vista was supposed to be and better! Do I sound a little MS slap happy? Oh well.
Hope all is well with you. Keep blogging, I enjoy reading it!