High volume workstation swap 2

[rensai]

I've got to accomplish a very high number of workstation upgrades in a very short amount of time. There will be approximately 2300 machines replaced. Additionally, I won't have access to the old machines for long so I need to make sure I have a good backup of the old machines' drives. We do not want to just ghost the old drives over the new, but a ghost image of the drives is possible for backup purposes.

Right now managements current plan is to back up user data to a net share or something along those lines, then put the new box in place and move the data back. The problems I see are that many departments have specialty software not installed in our standard load which would put more work on the techs, data could be lost since tech's may miss saving some if we use this manual process, and our network is fairly slow by todays standards as we're still on 10Mb. On top of that, management wants the swap done in 2 months, with about 8 tech's. Right now its taking the tech's anywhere from 1 to 3 hours per machine depending on the amount of software to be reinstalled, data moved, etc.

Any thoughts on better ways to do something like this? This is the largest workstation upgrade we've ever done and we're at a bit of a loss as to the best way to go about doing it.

 

[porkchopexpress]

It might be worth looking at the MS tools that are available for this sort of task.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/new/usmt-o.asp

http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/w2k3/W2K3_ADMT.htm

 

[johnny99]

You should look at Altiris

They have solutions for most of what you have written about.
Two tools spring to my mind. The can make images of all the desktops and they also have a tool to migrate user settings from one desktop to another.

But if the 2 month started yesterday you will not have the time to set it up.

We are implementing Altiris at the moment, but we have a total of less then 600 desktops. And we normaly limit our roleouts to less then 30 at a time (max has been 60 at one time)

Our plan is to go away from department or company roleouts and see roleouts, more like replacement of single desktops. There will be exceptions, but that is our general plan.

/johnny

 

[rensai]

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[rokitman1]

Hi

I was an engineer on a 5000 rollout from W95 to W2k and we used Altris, I must say it was OK "some" of the time, I still prefered the manual migration, we had lots of different departments to do, but also used pre-built hard drives with in similar hardware PCs in a workshop, then just swapped the drives (it was a few years ago, can not remember the software used to create drives) in my experience, the main obstacle was laptops and copying PSTs and recreating the Outlook settings was VERY time consumming..we kept old PCs / drives for 10days MAX all users were told to check all was OK before the 10 days was up!! software testing was done for about 1 year prior to rollout...





Rokitman1
"The Problem Exists Between The Chair And The Keyboard"

 

[coladmin]

if all of the PC's are standarized you could utilize RIS and group policy to deploy the desktops and software.

I have sed RIS and group policy in several situations and I have found it to work very well. it is very well documented and it is farily easy to set up and learn.

the only sticking point here is getting the software installe that is not oncluded on the master image and that is not packaged using windows installer. for this I have found a rather cost effective solution by outsourcing the repackaging of applicatons to

http://www.success-systems.com.au/

as for backing up users files what about using your network backup solution and back their data to tape whihc you can then restore to a network drive later

good luck

good luck