Automated XP and Application Deployment With Unattended

One area large corporates typically excel is desktop and application deployment. One push of a button and a new machine is built, configured and loaded with the correct applications for a particular user. Companies spend thousands on having this capability to offset staff costs and spend many hours developing and tuning the different builds.

Many administrators in small businesses are envious of this capability and often resign themselves to hand-cranking every new machine. For low volumes building by hand is feasible, but as the volumes increase, the time taken in preparation becomes a major drain on resources.

Is there another way?

There are basically three options to avoid installing by hand:

* Imaging
* Microsoft Remote Installation Services (RIS)
* Automated installation (CD or server based)

Discounting the first two options was simple given that:

a) The mix of hardware and a constantly changing application environment makes the number and frequency of image updates would make administration onerous. Guaranteed to fall by the wayside fairly quickly.

b) Expertise in the inner workings of windows deployment using Microsoft's tools is required. As a longtime Solaris and Linux administrator, I had no relevant experience and no desire to learn the required tools.

Automated deployment tools

So that left the automated tools, the main contenders looked to be:

ANI (Automated Network Installation) is a server based automation tool for deploying the OS. It does not have any capability for application installation, so ruled itself out early on.

nLite is a CD based build and has been around for x years. It has many fans in the Windows world and building a CD was easy, although when the moment came, it didn't boot a new machine. Despite there being a good amount of community help available, the windows bias and need to master boot CDs with every change meant it did not seem a great fit for me.

It was while researching the problems I was having with nLite, I came across Unattended.

Unattended is a small open source project found on Sourceforge. It basically comprises of a Linux boot disk to mount a network share and a set of perl scripts that handle installing the OS, patches and applications. I especially like the fact that, being based on Linux, you can peer under the hood to see what is going on and easily add to the configuration. A clever feature is the ability to handle reboots and continue with the installation, by using autologin credentials and updating the registry. This makes for a truly hands-off experience.

Installation is trivial, once the correct DNS and Samba shares entries are in place. The installation instructions are well written and easy to follow, but assume you are proficient with configuring Samba and adding DNS entries. Pop a boot disk into you new machine and you will be installing Windows in no time. I only deploy XP so the tool is perfect for me - but note there is no support for Vista/Windows 7 currently.

Unattended is preconfigured to install a number of popular Microsoft and Open Source applications and amending the config scripts for new applications is trivial, with any problems normally being caused by incorrect switches on the installer.

I now have the ability to deploy an XP system, preconfigured with Service Pack 3, recommended patches and a suite of applications with minimal effort. How much effort?

1. Pop in boot CD
2. Enter the Windows serial number
3. Confirm you want to format the hard drive
4. Carry on with your day, in about an hour your system will be ready to go

Overall I have been really impressed with Unattended and hope it grows in strength. Adding new apps to a standard build is a breeze; testing is as simple as editing a.bat file and trying the install from a client. My next goal for the tool is to deploy applications to Windows 7 workstations and I will be keeping an eye on development for Windows Vista & 7.

About the Author:

Craig Harffey is Chief Technology Officer for The Myfreedom Group, an IT and data centre services company providing consultancy, relocations, recruitment and support services to medium and large organisations.


Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5095482

Windows 7 Optimization - Remove Unnecessary Network Services

Roughly 1 year ago Microsoft released Windows 7 to the retail world and it has definitely been received as a significant improvement over its predecessor Vista. Many of the organizations that took a pass on Vista to stay with XP are starting to give Windows 7 a serious look for its use as their workstation OS platform going forward. As a result, we thought that we should take a look at ways to improve overall system performance within the Windows 7 environment.

Windows 7, like its predecessors, includes a number of features that are really intended on either setting you up for a future that has not yet arrived or are background processes meant to try and anticipate what you will need in the future to try to improve perceived performance. While these features are intended to improve the overall user experience, in many cases they simply end up consuming valuable CPU cycles or memory lowering overall performance. This occurs because these features must actively be used in order for them to contribute to your environment and many that are enabled by default simply are not used by many organizations.

One area that includes a number of examples is the network services that are installed by default. Included by default is support for the IPv6 protocol, Quality of Service for the workstation, and 2 topology services to help users find other systems on the network; none of which will likely perform any significant functionality in your environment. I am not saying these are not valuable services, but they need to be used in the proper context and environment in order to provide value to the organization. Let's take a look at them one by one, so one can make an informed decision as to whether these should be included in your default Windows 7 deployment image.

IPv6 Support

Enabled by default is the IPv6 protocol stack. Don't confuse this for standard TCP/IP, which has become the standard network protocol for most organizations, the Internet, etc. That protocol is formally known as IPv4, and it is enabled by default as well. IPv6 is intended as a long-term replacement for IPv4 due to its increased number of available addresses and other improvements. The point is, if you haven't specifically set your LAN/WAN environment up for IPv6, why enable it? Even if you had, there would then not be a need for IPv4. The two should only both need to be enabled on the same machine during a short transition period.

Bottom line if you are not using IPv6 today, disable it on the workstation image. Otherwise, you are forcing the machine to maintain a protocol stack it will not be using, which will force DHCP requests to take longer to resolve because the network layer needs to ask for both addresses forcing the system to wait for the IPv6 stack to timeout before resuming normal network operations.

QoS Packet Scheduler

Quality of Service and its little brother Class of Service, both fill a very important role in shaping network traffic in a finite bandwidth world. These are 2 very important technologies that help ensure that traffic on bandwidth capped lines such as those used in Wide Area Networks are used to their fullest by giving priority to applications that need real-time performance and lowering the priority of less business critical applications such as web surfing. That being said, is it really necessary to shape the traffic leaving a workstation?

Workstations are typically placed on high-speed gigabytes subnets (or potentially 100Mbps in locations with older gear) with good connectivity to all other subnets on the LAN. Running the QoS scheduler forces the network subsystem to constantly check whether or not there is some other application running on the workstation that has a higher priority request for the network, lowering overall throughput and forcing a more memory and CPU intensive queue handler to be used.

Bottom line, if your network is congested to the point this technology would really make a difference, your time and money would probably be much better spent improving your local switch gear than managing the QoS policy for your workstations.

Link Layer Topology Services

The default network configuration also includes to network services: the Link-Layer Topology Discovery Mapper I/O Driver and the Link-Layer Topology Discovery Responder. These 2 services together are responsible for finding other systems on the network and the resources that they provide such as file and print shares. In a lot of ways they are the next version of the computer browser service. In nearly every environment that I have ever been in, all of the resources that a user should have access to are provided by the login script or some other similar means. These services have no role or effect on a user's ability to find AD published printers or shares. As a result, these services then just end up adding network traffic to the environment that only helps users find things they shouldn't be looking for.

Conclusion

As I mentioned earlier, it is not that I don't think that these services are without merit and cannot be useful in the proper environment; I am only questioning whether or not they really should be enabled by default in your organizations base image.

Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5127430

Tips on Deploying Windows 7

Many companies are making the move to Windows 7. In large part this is happening because using older operating system, like XP, 2000 Professional or Windows 98, is now really old. Too many changes have occurred at the hardware level, and also at the software level. Even if an IT manager would only like to upgrade applications, trying to take advantage of the application suites will not be possible with some of the older hardware or Operating system technology.

That said, migration to Windows 7 is not a straightforward path. It holds many potential rewards, nevertheless there are many questions and challenges. So here are some Tips on Deploying Windows 7 because there are some issues that may present themselves and an IT manager would do well to be acquainted with them and prepare go a rounds.

• You should investigate application and user profiles or the data, application configurations and settings that make up a user’s desktop environment before any deployment takes place.
• Applications or the core purpose of using a PC: running tools that support your organization’s business operations must be well established to perform under the new environment.
• User skills or the ability of your users to work with and operate a desktop to fulfill their daily task
• User upgrades vs. clean installs. The issue here is that since it is not possible to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7, you must take precautions to provide protection for end user data.
• Complications of XP mode. If you decide to use XP Mode in Windows 7, you have to remember to build and deploy a Windows XP virtual machine onto target computers. Additionally, you must install applications that are incompatible with Windows 7 into the XP Virtual Machine.
• Installing or virtualizing applications. Microsoft has made tremendous efforts to add application compatibility support within Windows 7; however, you must test and possibly convert some of your applications before moving them to the new OS.

Source:-www.windows7news.com

How to Deploy Windows 7

If you are ready to deploy Windows 7, if you are ready to make the move to a new operating system, here are some tips that you can use to make that transition smoothly.

Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit
Do you have the right hardware? Does you PC system have the necessary components to make the transition problem free? Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit can help you with that. But you say that you have hundreds of PC’s that need to be identified, and you don’t have the time or the resources to accomplish that. Well the MAP Toolkit is an agentless tool that can provide inventory, assessment, and reporting elements so that you can securely assess IT environments for various platform migrations. Start with Windows 7, but you can also assess Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V and Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track, and Windows Azure.

Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) 4.0

Here’s the second toolkit. This suite of programs offers practical guidance for IT organizations. it helps IT professionals connect service management principles to everyday IT tasks and activities and ensures alignment between IT and the business. For example, you can get information about several business practices that work with Windows 7.

• Best Practices for Service Vendor Management
• Bridging from MOF Guidance to Microsoft Products – A Companion Guide
• Continuous Improvement – A MOF Companion Guide
• Cross Reference ITIL V3 and MOF 4.0
• Diagrams for Management Reviews
• Getting Started with MOF 4.0.
• IT Pro Quick Start Kit
• Management Reviews
• Microsoft Operations Framework 4
• MOF Action Plan – Redistributing the Workload
• MOF Action Plan – Release Readiness for Windows 7
• MOF Action Plan – Standard Changes

The word for IT managers thinking about deploying Windows 7, you are not alone.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 (Update 1)

Ok, but enough reading. If you want to listen to an expert on deploying Windows 7, here’s your chance. He will show you how to use Hardlink Migration. With this deployment video you will see one of the features you can take advantage of when you use MDT to deploy Windows 7. Here, instead of copying all the users files off the machine, then copying them back again after the Windows 7 install completes, the Hardlink Migration keeps all the files on the machine, and just updates the pointers to them in Windows 7. It saves a lot of time during the install process.

The Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7 (Version 2.0)

The Windows Automated Installation Toolkit (AIK) includes a variety of tools and documentation to help you deploy Windows in your organization. This works well with highly customized environments, and it includes tools that will enable you to configure many deployment options. Here is what Windows AIK includes:

• Windows System Image Manager (Windows SIM)
• Open Windows images, create answer files, and manage distribution shares and configuration sets.
• ImageX
• Capture, create, modify, and apply Windows images.
• Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM)
• Apply updates, drivers, and language packs to a Windows image.
• Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE)
• A minimal operating system environment used to deploy Windows. The AIK includes several tools used to build and configure customized Windows PE environments.
• User State Migration Tool (USMT)
• Migrate user data from earlier versions of Windows to Windows 7.

Source:-www.windows7news.com

Windows Cleaning Software - A Boon to Entrepreneurs

Technology has opened up more avenues than ever for rising entrepreneurs to take benefit of the immense growth with more and more advanced tools and resources to assist in growing a business. One of the most recent industries to have been impacted by this phenomenon is Windows cleaning. Software solutions, as you know, are a very imperative step for any entrepreneur, be it a small, medium, or large scale one, to expand business and manage it in a better manner. Up 'til now, such options were not available to business owners in this seemingly small-scale industry. However, as many around the world realised the immense potential that has so far been untapped in this domain, this gave rise to more and more entrepreneurs willing to venture into this territory.

However, as happens with every business, there were soon management problems. Clients companied of cleaning not being done according to the initial promise, staff not showing up in the required numbers or not showing up at all, and so on. The next best thing that could be done was to deploy contractors for each team to supervise, but even that proved to be no good, since many times there was just too much work to employ contractors that were experienced and qualified. Also, even if there were the desired numbers available, there was always a question over whether even they would be able to live up to the client's expectations, since they too, were human, and couldn't possibly be as accurate as a machine.

Read more : http://EzineArticles.com/3935775

Microsoft tweaks deployment tools for Windows 7

Microsoft officials have said somewhat small regarding the features and features the enterprise is building into Windows 7 for small business (versus house) end users. But a brand new blog post around the Windows Program Deployment blog previews some of the changes enterprises can expect about Windows seven deployment equipment.Post writer Patrick Azzarello, a Senior Plan Supervisor on the Windows OS Deployment Group, notes that the deployment modifications with seven needs to be more compact and less onerous than these launched with Vista:“Don’t worry though – these are mostly enhancements (where in Windows Vista we pretty a lot changed all the equipment and infrastructure used to build and deploy Windows).”In his January 20 blog publish, Azzarello said the deployment modifications in Windows seven fall primarily into three buckets: Windows set-up; servicing infrastructure and resources that are part with the Windows Automated Installation Kit (for corporate users) or OEM Pre-installation Kit for resellers); and network-based deployment.In terms of set-up, Microsoft has moved the license key on the Windows Welcome page. It also is enabling “specific, licensed components,” as an alternative to re-imaging a technique to make upgrading from different Windows seven versions (like Property Premium to Ultimate) easier, Azzarello blogged. Microsoft has made the machine-configuration more granular and faster so that customers will have a better understanding of what;s going on upon initial set-up. As he acknowledged:“Windows Vista;s experience here left a lot to be desired, even causing some consumers interrupt the process which caused system corruption, something we needed to invest in to avoid.”Azzarello detailed other deployment tweaks that are coming — everything for consolidation of offline-management resources, to installing the Windows Recovery Environment by default, to adjustments in dynamic-driver positioning and support for multicast clients. If you are a corporate user who relies on these kinds of resources, his full post is worth a read.Meanwhile, here are a handful of other Windows seven links I;ve collected that might be of interest to corporate people:Windows seven features IT pros will like Windows 7: A first look for IT pros Anti-virus software compatible with Windows 7 Windows seven: What;s coming for company customers

Source:-http://blogleaf.com

Windows 7 Migration Story

The migration to Windows 7 is being touted as one of the largest migrations to occur in PC history. Some organizations are simply migrating as part of attrition when new PCs are purchased. Others are looking at migrating large sections of their organization based on requirements for a new application, while still others are deploying Windows 7 to select users who are clamoring for the latest and greatest. Whatever your particular situation, having a solid plan in place is a must. For our story, we are going to set up a scenario which many of you will be able to relate to, and then walk you step by step through the high-level tasks that make up a successful migration. Along the way, we'll give you tips and tools to get you there.

Our story

As the director of IT, you are approached by the CFO, who requests that his entire department be moved to Windows 7 to support a new financial package. He has one main location at headquarters with 30 PCs, and 10 satellite locations spread over a 50-mile radius with 5-10 PCs each. All PCs are running Windows XP. He is requiring that all existing software on those PCs be supported on Windows 7, since he has no budget for new software. As an additional wrinkle, he has recently replaced some of those PCs and therefore needs to know how much of the current hardware will support Windows 7.

Where are you now?

Before you can move forward, you have to know where you are now. That includes finding out how many existing applications are actually being run in his department, as well as what type of hardware he has. Enter Novell's ZENworks Asset Inventory and Asset Management.

ZENworks Asset Inventory is included in the ZENworks Configuration Management package. Asset Inventory will give you a detailed picture of the readiness of your hardware for Windows 7. The reporting function is phenomenal and will give you lots of options to run. In like fashion, it will provide you with a software inventory, listing all the applications installed on each machine.

Once the hardware and software inventories have been completed, Asset Management will take you to the next level. By entering all your software licenses into the database, compliance reports can be run. Not only that, but by tracking the history of the PCs for a time, you can see what applications are actually being used. For example, consider a product like Adobe Creative Suite. Let's say you have 10 licenses, but someone in your department was trying to keep end-users happy and installed it on 20 machines. When you use Asset Management to check usage, it reveals all 20 machines, and the fact that only 5 users are actually using it on a regular basis. Asset Management has not only apprised you that you are out of compliance, but that you are over-buying software licenses!

In the case of our story, you should run several reports and have a meeting with the CFO to present the findings, including what hardware is ready for Windows 7 and actual counts of the software that is installed in his department. He may be surprised to learn that 5 of his staff have Quicken installed, even though it is not an application that is used by his department. Based on your findings, strategic decisions can be made around what needs to be supported on Windows 7, and any compliance issues that exist can be rectified.

Now both you and he have a clear picture of where you are going with the migration. With your list of required hardware, you can begin the ordering process. Likewise, with your software list, you can begin testing on Windows 7.

Article Source: http://goo.gl/pJzFa