Windows Forum
by geraldkiii
You are dealing firstly with the creation of Standard Operating Environment (SOE), which includes the deployment of hard drive images, with some standard applications. There are software licensing aspects, like volume licence and OEM licence, which need to be considered when using Microsoft's sysprep utility to prepare a standard desktop or server installation for deployment - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;302577&sd=tech.
Symantec or Norton Ghost is commonly used to create disk images, on CDs, DVDs, hard drives or network storage. It has utilities to tailor the images and deploy them over the network - see http://sea.symantec.com/content/product.cfm?productid=9
Microsoft has their Remote Installation Services (RIS), where a client operating system is installed across the netword.
Novell's ZENworks supports its town disk imaging application - http://www.novell.com/products/zenworks. Novell have also extended ZENworks to support Linux workstations and servers - http://www.novell.com/products/zenworks/linuxmanagement/overview.html.
Secondly, you want to look into the deployment of applications to the desktop. Novell's ZENworks Application Launcher (NAL) has all the tools to create installation packages and deploy them to the desktops in the Netware Directory Service (NDS) environment.
Microsoft's Active Directory (AD) environment relies on third party tools like Wise Package Studio (http://www.wise.com/wps.asp) or Veritas WinInstall (http://www.veritas.com/us/products/wininstall2000) to create application packages, to be automatically installed to the client PCs.
Thirdly, you may want to discuss the thin client architecture - Microsoft Terminal
Server, and its predecessor, the Citrix MetaFrame or Citrix Presentation Server,
where all the intelligence and processing is centralised in a powerful server, or a
bank of servers. Screen images and updates are delivered down the line and
keystrokes and mouse movements travel up the line. The client device is 'thin', in
other words cheap, running one simple client application and rarely requires any
software maintenance.
The savings in these type of solutions are in the economies of scale and
centralisation of support resources, not in the cost of sofware licensing. Old PCs
or purpose built 'dumb' terminals can be used to render images under a thin client
architecture, which on hand may be considered as a return to centralised mainframe
architecture, the swing of the pendulum to the other direction.
by tom.fields
by tom.fields
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