Workstation Imaging on a Budget

There are a ton of great tools out there for image deployment. There's the actual deployment tool like Microsoft's SMS/SCCM, Symantec's Ghost Suite, Novell's ZCM, etc..., then there's utilities like Big Bang's UIU that help with driver support. All these programs have one thing in common; they're all expensive!

As I've said before, I work in state government. I am just a lowly IT worker who has no political swing, so when we made some changes few years ago that 'broke' image deployment solution, I was left without the tools I needed to do my job, and without the time/money/know-how to get it done. It was then that I started looking for something free that get us by until we could purchase something.

What I found surprised me, because the last place I expected to find a free imaging solution was from Microsoft. Here's what you need:

Windows PE/Bart's PE: The PE stands for "Preinstallation Environment". You must be able to boot your PC from a source other than the hard drive you plan on imaging to/from.

Imagex: This is a utility Microsoft released with Vista for imaging. It is a command line tool that creates .wim image files. It does file based imaging, and has many cool features we will get in to later.

Sysprep: Good old Sysprep... This is used to generalize an image by wiping out the identifiers that tie the OS to that specific hardware. It is the key in making a hardware agnostic image.

Drivers: One of the coolest sites on the whole entire internet is "Driverpacks.net". They have a huge collection of drivers that they make available for free. They update their collection very regularly. If you have a wide variety of hardware you want an image to be compatible with, they're the way to go.

So here's how the pieces all fit together:

I start out by choosing a "standard PC" to start. I like to choose something that has a functional NIC and Mass Storage Controller straight off the Windows Install disc. Once I have selected my PC I install Windows, the applications I want, and configure the PC, all logged in as the local Admin.

Next I download the latest driverpacks from driverpacks.net. After I decompress them, I go through the list and get rid of some of the drivers I know I won't be using for sure. I have a VBScript I will share later that goes through and reorganizes the files that Driverpacks.net gives you to the directory structure that you need for Sysprep.

Next I sysprep the workstation, and tell it to shutdown when I'm done.

After the PC powers down, I put in my PE cd/usb boot device (this could be done through PXE if you want) and boot the PC to the CD. I run imagex and capture the image to a network share.

To test the build/capture, I grab a different PC, boot it to PE, use Imagex to apply the image I just captured, and then reboot the PC. If it works, It is on to our testing group and out of my hands.

I will go through how each of these steps work, and more importantly how you can make them work for you later. I have many scripts that I wrote to make the tedious/complicated parts much easier. Thanks.