How we use Configmgr OSD Prestage to deploy 2500 laptops with almost no network load

This post got a bit longer than intended ,jump to the bottom to read about how we use prestage task sequence to deploy 2500 laptops in a very short time period across 16 sites from one central Distribution Point with no network load and no interaction other than powering them on.

This may not be a good solution for  everyone ,but it works very well for us.
We're happy since we can make changes to the image at any time ,we're no longer screwed if we find a flaw in the image after the vendor have applied the image. takes the pressure off.
The vendor is happy ,the prestage image only takes 3 min 20 sec to apply from USB compared to some of the other customers image that take 1 hour pr machine. No bottlenecks in their factory line
The site admins are happy since they can deploy as fast as they like without worrying about the network link

I will post more details on how to set this up soon ,or even better I'll see if i can get my colleague to do the write up since he's the brains behind this.

I work for a Troms County Council in Norway and part of my job is to supply services to our 16 upper secondary school. Troms County has since 2006 bough laptops to all students when they start on the first year. The student use the laptop for the 2-3 years of school and after they are done they get to keep the laptop.
Each year we buy 2500+- new laptops intended for the new students that start in August. As soon as school starts the pressure is on to get the laptops distributed as fast as possible so that they can start using them.

Since 2006 we have had many different ways of deploying OS and applications to the laptops. some of them worked OK and some were complete disasters (remember this was 2006 ,before MDT and Configmgr). We've always had the computers branded, imaged and unboxed by the vendor, but the machines still needed to be named ,joined to the domain ,assigned to the student in the asset system and loaded with the correct software for their class on site.

2006 - 2007

First year the solution was a dual boot XP Home - XP Pro solution ,the idea was that they used the XP Pro for school work and XP Home for personal stuff. Add in some sketchy Boot Manager software that hid the XP Home partition when booted in XP pro and vice versa.
As you might have guessed that didn't work very well. The Dual boot software often corrupted one or both of the partitions causing lots of trouble.

2007 - 2009

We dropped the dual boot stuff after one year and went with the newly released Windows Vista.
...yeah, nuff said.
The only thing worth mentioning is that we got the requirement that the image should be made available to the student on a DVD, so we actually got 2500 dual layer DVD's printed.

2009 - 2014

Jump to Windows 7 and MDT and things start to get usable. but still required a lot of work when the machines arrived on site.

We got Configmgr 2007 around 2010 ,but it didn't change much. We stilled used "wds style" images for this process. they were created in mdt, but was basically fat images that got loaded on the machines.
Remember the machines are imaged 2 months before school begins so we don't know witch student get what laptop, how many for each class and so on. So the computers are loaded with a generic image.
That being said ,this solution probably lived a few more years that it should have, since this only happens once a year it was easier and faster to do the same procedure as the year before rather that come up with something better.

 2014 - Present

This is probably what you came here to read.
Now we use the prestaged-content feature of Configmgr 2012 to image the laptops. we've used this system for the last two years and we're now preparing for the 3rd round.

The big advantages of this system is:

• No network load (all content is pre staged on the disk)
• The task sequence is very fast 15 minutes from start to finish
• The deployment is zero-touch (light touch if you count the power button)
• Applying the prestage image takes only 3minutes 20 seconds pr machine so the vendor is very happy.
• We can still make changes to the drivers and apps after the machines are pre staged. If we decide to update java ,will download only the new java package ,the rest is loaded from disk.

The system consist of 3 task sequences:

1st Task Sequence (Create Prestage)

The first task sequence is just a stripped down copy of the task sequence you want to use where you've removed all the unnecessary stuff that this model don't need. Like drivers for other models.
This task sequence is only used for deciding what content to prestage on the computers.

2nd Task Sequence (Deploy Prestage)

This is the one that we send to the vendor. it's the one that does all the work.

This task sequence partitions the disk ,loads the prestage image and boot image on the machines.

This task sequence have a lot of steps that run different scripts and commands to hadle all the disk stuff.

3rd Task Sequence (Deploy)

The third task sequence can be your normal task sequence, this is the task sequence the computers run once they come on site ,since everything is prestage it runs very fast. (15 minutes). We use thin images so the 15 minutes include installing Configmgr Client ,Office ,Flash ,Java and a dictionary application. 

So here is how it works.

1. We create a prestage image that we send to our vendor.
2. The vendor unpacks all the computers, add anti theft sticker ,image them and put them in backpacks.
3. We get a asset file that we import into Configmgr. The machines are imported into a collection that have a required OSD advertised to it.
4. Someone at the school plugs as many machines as they can handle into the network and starts powers them on. (Since there's no network load he can start as many wants)
5. The machines boot and immediately start the OS Deployment.
   (boot image is slightly modified so that absolutely no keypresses are necessary) 
6. The computers run the required task sequence in 15 minutes ,once they're finished they remove themselves from the prestage collection.
7. The Asset system reads computers from a custom table in Configmgr  ,so they just have to assign the computer to the student's username.

We use a custom version of my (old) OSD Overview report to monitor the deployment. 

Since we know it's supposed to take 15-16 minutes we have added a color rule to the databar that gradually changes from green to yellow the further away from 15 minutes it gets. Any errors are colored red so that they are easy to spot.

Next post will contain details on how to create the 3 task sequences.
If you can't wait read the guide we used here

Got any interesting imaging stories ,post them below? 

OSD Details ,Part 2 of my OSD Dashboard Report

As promised, here is part 2 for my OS Deployment Dashboard.

It's designed to be a drill trough report from my OSD Dashboard,but you can also run it stand alone.
The query has been  completely rewritten from my last report so it should be a lot more reliable than the last version.

Download Reports.zip

To upload the report ,download the zipfile and extract to a folder. you can upload the rdl files the old fashion way or you can test drive the new version on my upload script.

To run the script you only need to specify the url to the reporting server(normally the site server)

The script will create a new folder called "Larsen Reports"(can be set with parameter), upload the reports and change the datasource to your configmgr server. 

& '.\Upload Reports v3.ps1' -webServiceUrl http://your-report-server 

Staring with the controls ,the "Deployments" field lists all task sequences and deployments in a readable format. Next the "Computer" will filter to only show computers that have run that deployment.

Lastly for the "Start Date" and "End Date" you just need to make sure the computers OS Deployment are between these dates. (These two parameters are mostly used by the Dashboard to select the correct deployment when there are several attempts for a single machine.) 

The top of the report shows some basic info about the machine, name ,DN and hardware model if they are available.

The part your most likely interested in is the step by step status for the OS Deployment.

It'll show you a nicely formatted (if i may say so myself:-) ) list  with the details for each step. in the task sequence and how long time each step took.

The list is quite minimalist ,but a lot of info is available as tooltips. Execution status on the Group And Action Name and Exit Code and Action Output on the Step number.

If a group or action is skipped the text is over lined to illustrate that. If an action has an exit code other than 0 (Success) the line is colored red so any errors should be easy to spot.

If you have any trouble displaying the graphics in the report ,try restarting the SSRS Service.

As always, hope you like the report. Post comments and questions below.

If you think others might find this usefull ,feel free to share a link on twitter ,facebook and forums. (this blog is tiny so not many people have seen this yet) 

OS Deployment Dashboard

Update 7 June: 

Have updated the download link with an updatec version(much faster) of the report.

If you downloaded the report before 7 June 2016 you should update to the newest version.

New version is also include the drill trough report (OS-OSD Details Report) so that you can click on a Computer to bring up the step by step details for that OS Deployment.

One of the first reports that i posted on this blog and by far the most popular is my "OSD - Overview" report. That report is now over 2 years old ,since then I've done a lot of custom report work both internally and for other clients and I've learned a lot of new techniques. My old OSD report was no longer up to my standard so it was time to create a new one.

Been working on this for a couple of days now and i think it's ready to show the public ..,so i present to you ,the new "Task Sequence Dashboard" ,hope  you like it!

Download

First page is a dashboard like view ,while page two and up contains details.

Hopefully most of the elements in the report should be self explanatory ,but i'll quicklime run trough some of the features.

The report has rebuilt controls ,now you can select only the task sequences that you're interested in. when you've selected the task sequences you get a list of deployments for the selected task sequences for, default it selects all deployments.
Last parameter is to set how far back you want to go ,default it's set to 3 months.

The main page have 4 elements:

Top left is a bar chart showing the number of OS Deployments pr day for the selected period.

Top right is an overview of what the success rate of each of the task sequences is in percent. It only considers "success vs. failed"

Bottom left is a overview of the active deployments for each task sequence. It shows the average runtime for each task sequence ,Active Deployements(that have been used) and how many computers have ran a each deployment.

Bottom right is a quick overview of what errors the computers might have encountered.
It has tooltips both on the table and the pie chart ,so if you hover over the error code it gives some more information.

Page two (and up) is a details page showing the status for each computer that have run the task sequence. It shows start and stop time using the clients local time ,and calculates how long the computer used on the deployment.
(Note! if the client hasn't done a hardware scan it uses a default timezone attribute in the report. Default it's set to 120)

I've colored coded the status messages so you can easily spot computers that have problems. The failed statuses have a tooltip that decode the error message when you hover over it.
(same decoder as the console uses ,it's not great for task sequence errors.)
Last column is bar chart so you easily can spot computers that used long time on the OSD.

Hope you like the report ,if you do please spread the word and/or post a comment bellow.