Labratory Testing tools / solutions

mistere23 · 08-12-2009, 11:22 AM

Hi, I am a student working an internship in a Jr. Admin role. I am helping to manage a lab of about 20 workstations used for hardware validation.

We are continuously updating these workstations as to the latest drivers that are developed as well as software development kits (SDK). Also these machines need to have Win7, Vist64 and Vista32 multiboot installations for testing purposes. When new driver / SDK's come out we have to update each workstation and each windows installation as well. My questions is: if we are having to update these machines on a weekly/biweekly basis what is the most efficient way of doing this?

One problem is that we never know what driver/SDK version will be 'blessed' by the software people until the day that they need it deployed onto the workstations. Because of this pre-imaging is somewhat problematic.

We have considered using a RIS, or Ghostcast type solution but I'm told that there may be a limitation in our network that disables or conflicts with PXE.

What would be ideal, in my mind, is a central management feature that allows changing drivers as well as install/uninstall ability on all workstations/installations from a server. In other words a management console on which you can make configuration changes and then have them populated throughout the environment. Anyone know if anything like this exists??

Thoughts / suggestions??

08-12-2009, 11:22 AM	#1 (permalink)
mistere23 Registered User Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 1 OS: xp	Labratory Testing tools / solutions Hi, I am a student working an internship in a Jr. Admin role. I am helping to manage a lab of about 20 workstations used for hardware validation. We are continuously updating these workstations as to the latest drivers that are developed as well as software development kits (SDK). Also these machines need to have Win7, Vist64 and Vista32 multiboot installations for testing purposes. When new driver / SDK's come out we have to update each workstation and each windows installation as well. My questions is: if we are having to update these machines on a weekly/biweekly basis what is the most efficient way of doing this? One problem is that we never know what driver/SDK version will be 'blessed' by the software people until the day that they need it deployed onto the workstations. Because of this pre-imaging is somewhat problematic. We have considered using a RIS, or Ghostcast type solution but I'm told that there may be a limitation in our network that disables or conflicts with PXE. What would be ideal, in my mind, is a central management feature that allows changing drivers as well as install/uninstall ability on all workstations/installations from a server. In other words a management console on which you can make configuration changes and then have them populated throughout the environment. Anyone know if anything like this exists?? Thoughts / suggestions??