Free Edition The OS Deployment feature allows administrators to deploy pre-captured images of Operating Systems on Target Computers. OS Deployer allows you to create a master image of the OS and deploy them to desktops and servers from a central location. This approach helps standardize OS across the organization, thereby reducing the support, training and management costs in maintaining them.
OS Deployment comes with a feature set that includes the following:
All Windows workstation and server OSs.
Many a times, organizations require specific sets of OS and applications for different employee roles / departments. It sure would be an easy task if pre-defined templates based on the software requirements of departments per se were available. OS Deployer addresses to this need by allowing administrators to create multiple templates; each of them holding a relevant OS image along with deployment configurations like participate in the domain, change security identifiers, network settings, user accounts, copy files, etc. So next time when a new employee joins the organization, administrators can simply apply the template for that role/department to deploy the OS.
Manual Deployment method is useful during scenarios when OS Deployment needs to be carried out on computers whose MAC Addresses are unknown. Such cases, would demand a manual change of the boot sequence in all the computers (manually) into ManageEngine environment using ManageEngine bootable media or ManageEngine PXE (Preboot eXecution Environment) Server and then deploy the image that has been created. The deployment configurations can be either set in the deployment templates or can be configured manually while deploying the image.
Event-Driven Deployment is best suited when OS needs to be deployed on multiple systems simultaneously and also control the bandwidth during deployment. When the predefined computers are ready for deployment, administrators can configure to start the deployment, when the OS image is multicast to all the target computers. Optionally, a time-out period could also be set after which the deployment will begin irrespective of whether the predefined number is reached or not.
When OS Deployment needs to be carried out on multiple systems with known list of MAC Addresses, Scheduled Deployment is the best possible method. Say for example, if OS deployment needs to happen on a 100 new computers with known MAC Addresses, you can schedule the deployment by specifying the list of MAC Addresses. OS Deployer will power on the computers using the Wake On LAN functionality and deploy the image at the scheduled time.
Users too can initiate OS Deployments. Administrators can create a set of deployment templates that meet the organization’s needs and assign a meaningful name to each template. They can then create bootable media or a PXE package containing the set of templates and switches on the custom deployment mode. Users that need to re-deploy their computers boot the computers from bootable media or PXE and select the template by name from the boot menu. The deployment starts immediately and proceeds independently on each computer.