The time had come for me to move on. I set about looking at alternatives. Armed with Google and Twitter, I sent out a tweet to see if anyone had any recommendations and then set about Googling myself. The amount of tools available was amazing. From open source(FREE)alternatives to paid applications, I had my work cut out for me. I narrowed the field down through a process of elimination using my "This looks easy enough to use" ability and settled on checking out the following.
Arconis Snap Deploy, FOG, CloneZilla, PartImage and GFL. Of all those listed, the only "paid app" was the Arconis Snap Deploy. No brainer you'd think, go for the open source freebie. Its not as easy as that unfortunately, the tool needs to be used by my whole team, most of which aren't overly Linux savvy. ( not a criticism BTW.. we work in a mainly windows environment ) .
All of the Linux tools involved either
a)Setting up a Linux server . ( no biggie with a VM rtg image of CENTOS, but a load of additional apps needed installing )
b)Building a custom live CD . ( using various tools available, and going through 5 or 6 revisions of said CD until I had all required apps/dependencies installed)
c)Using ready made but uncustomisable Linux "live" distro's ( easy peasy.. dl ISO and burn, but can be very hardware dependent)
I duly set about testing said apps and found much to my disgruntlement the same issue I have with most Linux tools namely dependencies and permissions at the fore, followed by unintuiative menus and potential for disaster if instructions werent followed to the letter. As impressed as I was with the open source solutions, the fact is that they aren't overly friendly in their setups and usage. Some of you reading this may think its a naive statement to make. ( I have said before that I am not a Linux Guru so don't haul me over the coals on my lack of Linux knowledge here :) ) The fact is that with a small team in a busy company, the need for a quick solid solution to work and work without having to put much thought into its application and usage is important to my needs. (I have to admit though that both CloneZilla and FOG are very very good tools and are ideal solutions for IT training environments on a budget and a Linux Guru in the corner :P)
I moved onto the Windows tool of which I had downloaded an evaluation. Proceeded to install the Server component, the Licensing addon, the Management addon etc
After about 1 min, a friendly what do you want to do menu popped up. I followed the sensible prompts .. built a data image without having to change any of the bios settings on the spangly new test Laptop, and dumped the image onto the USB HDD I had plugged in. I then restored the data image to a 2nd new spangly test Latop and it worked like a charm. In addition to this, some of the options available for restoring those images made the post restoration a breeze. ( SSID changer, IP Settings, Domain adding etc)
So .. whilst the windows solution was looking to be just as much of a pain in the A$$, the "side note" recovery boot CD did everything I wanted, did it well, added new features which were useful.
The decision was made. I was happy and we went back to merrily imaging our Workstations. Alls well that ends well :)
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