Use one clone to sync many Windows XPs?

[spamrefuse]

Our university library has 300 public Windows XP PCs.
At the moment each one of them operates as an individual PC and managing the pool (e.g. installing/updating software) is a nightmare.

My idea is to have one master PC, and all other PCs are a clone of the master's harddisk. If changes/updates are necessary, then the master is modified and the clone of its harddisk is sent out to all other PCs.

Hence, the software is not ment to be making 'backups', but rather
as a distributor of a centralized harddisk image.

My questions are:
1. Is clonezilla the right software for this?
2. Would this kind of setup work with Windows? (I mean: doesn't Windows go bezerk when it suddenly boots on a different computer?)

Thanks!
Rob.

[nai7]

Rob,

Thanks for checking out Clonezilla! I know the combination of Clonezilla and DRBL is able to do what you need, but as you can imagine, there are several steps. I also know I don't have all the details so, hopefully, others can add on to this and we will both learn something. (anyone have a good link/guide on this with more detail?)

  First a question, is the hardware on all the machines the same? If not, an image for each hardware set up would need to be made.

Here are the rough steps as I understand them:
<ol>
<li>Set up a DRBL server on the network.</li>
<li>Set up a share for the Clonezilla image(s).</li>
<li>Build a Windows install (or installs) you want to clone and distribute.</li>
<li>Install sysprep on the Windows machine (not sure of details here, but this keeps Windows from freaking)</li>
<li>Image the Windows install & put it in the share.</li>
<li>PXE boot a target machine.</li>
<li>Clone the image to the target.</li>
</ol>

  I'm a little foggy on all these so, here are some follow up questions:
<ul>
<li>Does the clonezilla iso need to somewhere in the DRBL server to image a target machine? Where?</li>
<li>Does a custom ocs file need to be set up to automate the clone process to the target?</li>
<li>What other steps are involved with sysprep? For instance, do you have to go reactivate installs & enter a different serial number or what?</li>
</ul>
<br />
Good luck and keep us posed on your progress, thanks!

Alan

[nai7]

yeah…posted..posted

[simonfishley]

Hi Rob

This may be a late reply but if you have not already decided on something you may want to check out http://trinityhome.org/ - We use it to image 30 identical laptops simultaneously and it works like an bomb!

Cheers
Simon