Forum Discussion
Deploying laptop images
We have about 1600 student laptops in the school that we usually reimage during the summer. We are looking for the most effective method to deploy images (that include Windows, Office 365, security software, printer configurations, etc.) to the laptops. We would like to minimize the time it takes to image each laptop and to keep the images updated. Any suggestions?
Thanks
6 Replies
I also work in a school district and we had SCCM, it broke and we chose not to fix it or upgrade.
We have used Ghost, Fog, SCCM and now MDT. I am still getting the hang of MDT, but I like it.
Sccm was too much, it just seem to be more for a big company or a place with more clients.
We have about the same amount of laptops as your school.
Ghost & Fog worked well, Fog is free, but I like Mdt a bit more.
Seems like you can customize without having to recreate images... for us anyways.
Mdt is free, is a MS product.
I am currently running the current version, and installing Win 10 x64 1703 on clients.
It silent installs most programs, Office 2016, we use Win Defender, and printer config is still up in the air.
Well I hope that helps.
SCCM is another option. or SCCM + MDT
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mt240567.aspx
https://mva.microsoft.com/en-us/training-courses/deploying-windows-10-using-system-center-configuration-manager-16311
Does this help you out? I work for an educational institution as well. We are currently using WDS to complete images, but are looking to move to WDS + MDT, and then eventually to SCCM. We may skip MDT, depending on how fast we have access to SCCM.
I wouldn't "skip" MDT... MDT integrated with SCCM is a little different of course but still, it's a best practice to buid your reference image(s) using MDT Lite Touch.
- MDT and SCCM seem to be almost the same thing. With some of the difficulties we (and others) have run into with MDT, do we really need it if we are using SCCM?
- a good starting place would be the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit www.microsoft.com/mdt
The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) provides a unified collection of tools, processes, and guidance for automating desktop. In addition to reducing deployment time and standardizing desktop, MDT offers improved security and ongoing configuration management.
