If it takes longer than 15 minutes to solve the configuration problem on the machine, just reimage it.
Have a configuration problem that you can't solve quickly? The investment of time required to solve complex one-off problems on individual machines is no longer time or cost justifiable. Managing and deploying stock images has become a central part of most IT organization's machine management strategy. These hard drive images resolve the issue by enabling these machines to always be brought back to a known state with a defined, automatable set of steps.
Image management has become the next problem. With some solutions, deploying each image has been somewhat manual. It includes having a custom CD or USB drive to boot the machine, installing the new agent, and then going back to the main console to push the images out to that machine. This required administrators to walk around to each machine, sometimes waiting at each machine for the step to complete.
If the solution doesn't support multicasting, one image of several gigabytes in size, is individually pushed to each target machine dragging down network performance as well as potentially taking too long to reimage a larger quantity of machines.
Set and forget
Kaseya Image Deployment offers a "set and forget" style of managing hard disk image deployments in the organization.
Set it:
- Configure a "Golden Master" machine and periodically capture images to local image repository
- Configure and schedule target machines with specified image and PXE server
Forget it:
- Images are now pushed out on the schedule using multicast deployments while enabling machines to be awakened during off hours.
Benefits of Kaseya Imaging & Deployment
- Streamline the deployment of operating systems to bare metal machines
- Manage computer lab environments with scheduled machine refreshes to return the lab machines back to a known state.
- Onboard and setup new machines by simply plugging them into the network.
Spend less wasted time troubleshooting single machine configuration problems or virus outbreaks by just reimaging the machine back to a known state and restore the user documents from backup.
