cloning windows, what about the licences

[Philippe Rousselot]

Hi,

I have a park of 15 identical PC booting both on ubuntu and XP pro.

If I got it well I could have a copy of both systems on the server and being able to deploy them on each computer, let's say once a week to make sure I start again with a clean system every week.

That means that I have to install Linux and Windows on one PC up to the last update and use that to create an image to save on the server and then to deploy on all PC.

My problem is that each windows system has a unique activation key, so how can I deploy the same image on all PC ?

This park will switch partly to vista (50/50), I have the same question

thanks in advance

Philippe

[Steven Shiau]

M$ provides a program called sysprep:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457073.aspx
It allows you to reenter the key. Of course, you have to do it one by one.

[Philippe Rousselot]

Hi,

Thanks for the answer. It seems then simpler to have 15 images on the server. Is this feasible in one action (turning on pc as pxe and then automatic install on all 15 pc at once) ?

Thanks in advance

Philippe

[Steven Shiau]

You mean you have 15 images with unique serial number for each one, and let clients to be restored via PXE ?
If so, yes, sure. However, you can only use unicast function, and you have to select each image for each client. You can make use of the "green prompt" and write your own script to do that. But this method will take a lot of disk space in the server, 15 images...

[Philippe Rousselot]

I have 15 pc that are absolutely identical besides mac address and licence number for WinXP. So yes I guess I will have images varying only by serial number (I haven't yet used clonezilla, but from what you say I guess that the program creates a serial number for each image).

for the disk space that represent approximately 15 Go per machines so 225Go of disk space, what is not so much considering the size and price of modern disks.

My problem is that I will have to install 15 machines and modify them when needed. At the end I am not sure it is better than using sysprep ...

Philippe

[Steven Shiau]

I think if you care about the disk space, use sysprep. If not, image all of them. My 2 cents.

[Ryan Whit]

As someone who maintains images for 80 laptops, I would recommend using as few different images as possible.  If you're actually sitting there making 15 images for 15 machines, you're losing the benefit of being able to image them in the first place.

Consider this:

- each time you must roll out system updates, you must update 15 individual images.  This includes updating one of each and then pulling the image onto the server, then rolling it back out to the SINGLE laptop that you just updated the image for.  Sounds like a big waste of time. 

- When you use sysprep, you can do the update once, and have a smaller added step of adding in the correct product key. 

You'll be happy you saved the server space and the valuable time!  You may even be able to automate the process.  Here is a link that may help you to do just that with sysprep!

http://www.symantec.com/community/article/5102/applying-unique-windows-product-keys-when-deploying-images

Best of luck to all readers!