System center configuration manager

Posted: Feb 08, 2011 |Comments: 0 |

SCCM is a great tool to roll out Windows 7. Microsoft provides a large amount of documentation, in fact so much documentation that it becomes hard to actually know what should and should not be done. To keep things simple, I'll concentrate on a very simple, but also very common scenario: Windows 7 is installed on new hardware, or hardware which is re-used. In the process the whole PC is wiped clean and a new OS is installed. I am not focusing on data migration. I am working on the assumption that all data is backed up to the network (because of roaming profiles or folder redirection). Here is explain a fairly simple and effective method to use SCCM to roll out Windows 7. For this you need: 1. Windows 7 enterprise (this the volume license version. While most of this works with retail versions as well, the activation and license issues are different). 2. a working SCCM installation (you can use PXE boot points, etc but I won't go into details how to set this up) 3. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010. You can download this from Microsoft. You don't strictly need this, but some of the tools are really quite useful. The methods explained here do not rely on the MDT 2010. 4. The required drivers for all hardware 5. All software installation packages ready and tested. When doing Windows 7 rollouts, keep the following in mind: 1. Standardization is key: try to avoid creating to many different configurations. It will save time and effort in the rollout, as well as reduce support burdens if everyone (as much as possible) has the same set of applications and configurations 2. Group policies: if you can configure something using group policy, configure it that way. It is easier to manage and can be changed in the future. 3. Hardware: make sure all hardware is recent, has at least 2GB of RAM. Also, avoid having too many different models. Again, standardization is key. Also, hardware from major manufacturers will be easier to use as they have better driver support. 4. Base image: create the base image on the most basic piece of hardware (or even better a VM in VMWare) you have access to. Also, this image should only contain the OS, some patches and perhaps some customizations. Nothing more. 5. User state migration. While the USMT is a great tool to migrate user's data and settings it also has a bug with a particular hot fix (which is installed on properly patched XP, Vista and Windows 7 machines), which requires another hot fix on each computer, on the server and during the installation. On top of that USMT is configured using XML files so this is something which requires a lot testing to get it to work the way you want it to. If you can avoid it, preserve your sanity and do that. 6. Documentation: Any change you make to the default image should be documented. Every step in the process should be documented. I try to keep things simple, but for manageability purposes it's important that the whole system is fully documented. I cannot stress this enough.

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