Infrastructure Optimization

The fine folks at bink.nu have pointed out that the downloads for Windows XP SP 3 are finally available. Ladies and Gentlemen, start your imagers!

http://bink.nu/news/windows-xp-service-pack-3-officially-avaiable-to-all.aspx

Is your company struggling with its migration plan to move to Microsoft Vista or Windows Server 2008? Does your IT Staff dread the thought of having to deploy new hardware in your enterprise environment? Do you still have technicians that run around with a handful of CD’s to deploy a new PC in a remote location? Do you have a separate image for every hardware platform in your environment? If an employee PC hard drive crashes, does it take more than 2 hours for your IT department to redeploy their system? Is your company still running Windows 2000 or maybe better yet, NT 4.0?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, don’t be embarrassed; because the truth is most companies today (both large and small) still struggle to migrate from one Operating System to the next.

At the heart of the issue for most companies is an ineffective strategy to rapidly create, maintain, and deploy images that will meet the needs of their entire enterprise as a whole. It is a well known fact that maintaining up-to-date images is an expensive, time-consuming problem in most large enterprises.

Despite the fact that today’s PC’s are blazingly fast and can practically jump through hoops, most companies ‘approach to Image Management is very antiquated. Typically, the process is very manual and difficult, at best, to keep up with today’s refresh cycles for hardware and software changes in the enterprise.

The nightmare for most IT departments begins because they work in heterogeneous environments where there are multiple PC and Server platforms from different vendors with unique hardware specifications. Secondly, from marketing, to finance, to human resources, each department and individual user has distinct application requirements. To further complicate issues, the great divide between geographical regions and their language requirements makes it increasingly impossible to develop, test, and maintain images across the enterprise. Most companies deal with this challenge by creating multiple images that eventually become outdated very quickly and a nightmare to update in a timely manner.

The Challenge

What if, like magic, you could totally automate the creation of your image and what if, you could condense the dozen or so images floating around your enterprise down to a single image that was capable of being applied to any hardware platform in your environment.

Device drivers and hardware dependent software tools could load independently of each other and do it dynamically as the image loads. And what if this was a highly compressed image that could be streamed across the network to multiple machines simultaneously and would be finished loading by time you came back from your lunch break.?

Better yet, what if you didn’t have to use expensive third-party software to accomplish all of this? Sound too good to be true? Could this be imaging nirvana?

The Solution

The reality is that there are IT shops that are experiencing this state of utopia and are successfully deploying PC’s and Servers throughout their environment with just a few mouse clicks.

You are wondering by now, how is this possible? Folks, the reality is, I have worked on several such projects in the past and customers are finding out that in most cases they already have the tools that they need to get out of the dark ages when it comes to image consolidation.

So here’s the deal, there is a global giant out there in the market place called Microsoft and over 95% of all companies (both small and large) use their software products (from the Client, to Messaging, to Management) to run their business.

Moreover, most companies using Microsoft software have made a huge investment in software licensing agreements for such products as XP, Vista, Server products, SMS, SQL, MOM, etc. and the list goes on.

The problem is that most of these companies find out that a lot of these products sit on the shelf and are underutilized for the amount of money that they have spent on it.

Over the past few years, Microsoft has spent a lot of time and effort in creating and developing what they call “Solution Accelerators”. These solutions are designed to help customers deal with point specific problems and to help them realize and exploit the capabilities of their existing software and infrastructure.

One such example is the Microsoft Deployment solution accelerator, whose sole focus in life is to provide the tools and guidance for rapid image consolidation and deployment.

Formerly known as BDD (Business Desktop Deployment), Microsoft Deployment is now in its fourth generation and has really come full circle as a solution that helps customers fill in the gaps to realizing and unlocking the potential of their infrastructure that they are already heavily invested in.

The latest name change signifies the fact the product has been extended beyond the desktop and is now capable of rapid server imaging as well.

Is this cool stuff or what? Imagine a world where, with a few mouse clicks, you can redeploy a client machine and deploy a dozen or so blade servers all at the same time.

And the best of all: this is a free download from Microsoft.

So I guess if my story has a moral, it would be this: you could quite possibly already have all of the ingredients in your lab to begin transforming the way you develop and deploy images in your environment.

If you’re familiar with BDD, and especially BDD 2007, you know that Microsoft has been thrashing around a bit on names for the next version of their excellent Business Desktop Deployment Solution Accelerator. Well, they’ve finally settled on a very Microsoft-y name: Microsoft Deployment 1.0, available for download on Microsoft Downloads. I must say - this name shocked me when Michael Niehous revealed it. I would have placed good money down on a System Center appellation.

But, irregardless of the name, MD 1.0 (which doesn’t really have the same ring as BDD, but I swear - I’m done commenting on the name!) has improved upon the already excellent feature set of BDD 2007. Let’s have a look at BDD/MD’s evolution real quick though:

Microsoft Deployment History

Pictures are great and all but what does it all mean? Well, the bottom line is that BDD 2007 was perhaps the best example of a deployment tool from Microsoft that mortals such as me could use and understand. It’s also been a highly-successful tool for our customers at Getronics. So, as you can imagine, I have been following changes to this tool (critical to my livelihood!) closely, looking for anything that will fundamentally alter what we’re already doing with clients, or for opportunities to suggest new and better ways of doing things. Let’s look at a few that I’ve found so far. If you’ve found others - shoot me a comment!

Support for Deploying Windows Server 2008 (kinda!)

One welcome addition for testing labs (such as ours!) is the psuedo-support for easy deployment of pre-release versions Windows Server 2008. I say “psuedo” because MD 1.0 is not intended to roll out production 2008 machines, and well, to be fair, neither are the current versions of Server 2008.

Why I think this is great is that my fellow engineers and me are trying out different configurations on virtual hardware, and being able to re-image via PXE is super-sweet. And hey, the fact that it’s restricted to Lite-Touch (LTI) is fine with me. Who deploys servers via Zero Touch anyway? Google, perhaps.

Documentation Wheel Changes

One really obvious change from previous versions of BDD is how the Documentation Wheel works now. It looks the same, but there are some subtle changes here, bringing its terminology into the present and in line with current thinking on deployment.

MS Deployment 1.0 Documentation Wheel

For example, the rather confusing “Computer Imaging System” has been renamed “Image Engineering” which makes a lot more sense to me, at least. The documents behind all of these areas have been updated as well, and are well-worth reading. Documentation in BDD has always been kind of a two-edged sword: there’s a lot of it, but it seems to be organized in a difficult-to-fathom kind of way. That still plagues MD 1.0, but in all fairness, there is a lot to cover, and I’m not sure I could organize it any better. Suffice it to say, if you are just getting started with BDD/MD, set aside a day or two to read every “feature team guide” that’s available from the documentation wheel. The Gestalt of knowledge you acquire will make you better at implementing BDD/MD than any one of the documents alone.

Compatibility with SCCM 2007

A big one for us is compatibility with System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), and the new ability to deploy XP, Vista and Server 2003 with MD and SCCM 2007. In addition, MD is completely integrated into the SCCM console, and shares the advanced task sequence features with its elder product. Task sequences can be built in, and imported from SCCM, which is really, really nice. Or, if you’re newer to the game, you can create “quick start” task sequences and packages from MD that are easily imported into SCCM.

MD 1.0 also extends the available actions in SCCM 2007 task sequences. Those of you who live inside the task sequencer, and have felt the raw power of these easy-to-explain, but hard-to-write-on-your-own automation tools will appreciate this.

This all means that MD and SCCM are ever-more tightly integrated, and if I had to guess, I’d guess that despite MS’s protestations to the contrary, MD will eventually be enfolded into SCCM, and will disappear as a standalone product. If anything, I would predict that if a standalone version does persist, MD will become “System Center Deployment Manager.”

Oh, and get this, BDD old-timers: you can now deploy to computers that SCCM 2007 does not see! This is kind of revolutionary, if you’ve struggled with getting all deployment targets into SMS/SCCM.

Multicast

Hang on to your hats, folks. But the biggest feature, IMO, of MD 1.0 is multicast. What’s that, you ask? If you’ve done large-scale deployments over heterogeneous networks, then multicast is just what you’ve been looking for. Some of the requirements are quite stiff, but if your hardware can handle it, its definitely worth looking into if you’re going to be doing significant hardware refreshes or upgrades.

Multicast is a technique in which one image is sent out from the imaging server, and is used multiply by the intended targets. In this way, multiple copies of the image are not being transmitted and overburdening your network.

There’s a new type of WDS (Windows Deployment Services) server called a Transport Server, and this is the new piece of the MD/WDS/SCCM universe that allows for multicasting. Read more on WDS in Server 2008 here. If you want to do multicasting, you’ll also need routers that are capable of it, and you’ll need to watch out for a bug: multicast only works with the boot.wim on Server 2008 install media. It does not work with the WIM from Vista install media. There are other caveats, but they are outside the scope of this article.

Small, but big changes

I don’t have the room to describe the full range of changes, but a few highlights are appropriate, before I go::

• Lite-Touch Installation: easy migration from LTI to SCCM 2007
• Support for multiple task sequence templates
• Task sequence rules can now invoke web services - great for keeping a running inventory of machines imaged, or for hooking into existing systems.
• Support for offline patching
• Support for language pack installation, both on- and off-line
• Windows Update integration
• Enhanced User State migration (stay tuned for a future article!)

In addition, if you aren’t ready to give up BDD 2007, the two products can now be installed side-by-side. I don’t see much reason to stick with BDD 2007 if you haven’t fully committed to it yet. If you’ve got a rock-solid BDD 2007 system, you may want to instance a lab before committing.

Overall, I’m liking what I’m seeing, and am looking forward to many, many deployments over the coming year.