TP#5: Roll Out

Question: You have been hired as a technology director for a school district that uses an operating system that is not your main area of expertise. Research the topic "imaging" or "cloning" to see how you might rapidly clone a new shipment of 500 laptops. Pay attention to cost, time and expertise. In three-to-five paragraphs, describe your options, why you chose the option you did, and what problems you may expect with that choice.

Side Bar: This particular TP touched home (more like work) with me because today my supervisor and I just completed a roll out of 600 laptop computers to the 8th grade class at one of the schools I am currently supporting. The entire process was new to me and I learned a lot. I was not present during the re-imaging process (these computers had been used prior and were re-imaged over the summer before I was in my position) for most of the computers but observed some being imaged for students. Very shortly I will participate in the roll out of 1,400 new computers to the 6th and 7th graders of this school. Doing research on this topic was very interesting and will be applicable in my understanding of the processes behind imaging/cloning and for planning.

Response:
First lets start with the act of imaging: basically we want to create a copy (file) of the operating system, applications, user settings and any data we want to place on the computers. The reason for doing this is to save time in setting up new machines by eliminating the installation of the operating system and each individual application.
Not just anyone can make an image of a computer OS and applications and place it onto other computers. In order to do this you need the rights/permission/license to copy and redistribute the software. There are different ways to acquire an image file of a computer. For home use there is software that allows you to make an exact replica of your computer hard drive in case of loss or crash. This software can also be used to capture and image file of a school computer. Some software applications for capturing an image file are Norton Ghost®, Partition Image or Clonesilla. These programs will all allow you to create an image file of a computer but dependent on how you wish to then place the image on other computers may or may not work for you.

Back the problem at hand:
In our case I would recommend using a professional group such as (Apples technical services consultants) to create a reliable image for us to use during the distribution. Since we are going to be imaging 500 computers I feel it would be best to have a good and reliable image as well as one that is licensed for distribution and customized to our school. Groups Like Apples technical services consultants can be hired to oversee the entire roll of the new computers but the service is very costly. In our case we will save on cost by only using their services for the creation of the image file.

My recommendation for the best way (considering cost, time, and expertise) to place the images onto the 500 laptops is to hire or use a trained staff member to multi-cast the images over a network to the new computers. Multi-casting will save a significant amount of time and resources. Basically with multi-casting a server will be used to send the image file over a network to the computers. The benefit of multi-casting is that it allows for multiple computers to be imaged at the same time. A network switch can be connected to the server and with good management support 24 computers can be imaging at the same time. Using this method, the 500 laptops could be imaged in less than 1 week. (Estimate 25 computers every 2-3 hours (imaging process 40 min-1hour, organization, connection and disconnection of the 25 laptops 1-1.5 hours, .5-hour cushion in case of problems).

The other option would be to place images onto the new computers using portable hard drives. The image file would be copied off the portable drive on the new hard drive. This process is less complicated as a whole and can be conducted by many helpers after only a short amount of training. This may not serve as the most effective way to image 500 computers because it will take a large amount of organization, space, and workers. I also believe, on the negative side that the option of using portable drives opens the door for issues relating to human error.

Conclusion:
There are several options in how to image a large number of computers. The option that is right for you is very dependent on your resources and needs. Don’t forget that getting images onto the computers is only one step in preparing the computers for educational use. You will also need to plan and calculate the time and resources it will take to assign, identify, secure, store, etc… each of these new computers.