It Takes a Village to Build an Image

摘要

Managing operating systems and campus-supported software can be a daunting challenge. Many colleges and universities handle these challenges by using disk imaging software to create and deploy system images to some or all of their computers. ASU West has been building and deploying system images with Ghost for many years. Recently, however, we decided to re-evaluate our imaging processes and we found a number of ways to improve them. This presentation will share what we learned. It will discuss our procedures so that you can find ways to implement or improve your own strategies―whether you are starting from scratch or looking for ways to refine your current processes. The IT department at ASU West uses Symantec Ghost to build images for virtually every Windows computer on campus. Our procedure is robust enough to ensure a well-tested image gets deployed consistently and flexible enough to accommodate images for a host of different environments. We not only deploy images in all of the IT managed labs and computer classrooms on campus. We also create and maintain a wide variety of specialty images for mobile computer carts, departmental laboratories, and check-out equipment. In addition, we also build and install images for the computers in faculty and staff offices. Our presentation will outline our entire process for image creation and deployment from start to finish. We will discuss things like timelines, testing procedures, handling hardware differences, pitfalls, updating images, getting customer feedback, and deploying images in a variety of ways. Though we will focus primarily on the Windows environment, we can also provide some insights for Macintosh computers. The presentation will include documentation about our processes and some guidelines for building a successful strategy at virtually any other institution interested in this approach.