Snap Deploy 3.0 for Workstation

Tag : Snap On Tools

Images are quite large so can be saved onto optical (CD/DVD) disksfor manual installation or to hard disk and network shares forremote deployment. A custom Deploy Server is provided to handle thedistribution, this component using multicast technology to pushimages out simultaneously to multiple PCs over the network.
Of course the server has to find and identify the PCs involved andthey may not be bootable, so you do need to first install a SnapDeploy Agent on each one, either from a bootable CD or via aPre-boot eXecution Environment (PXE) server, an implementation ofwhich is also included. Wake-on-LAN (WoL) support is also built in,enabling PCs to be powered up from standby as part of the process.
The whole operation is managed from a custom Windows console withimages either deployed manually - by selecting targets from a list- or automatically, with distribution kicked off when a pre-setnumber of targets have been discovered. Images can be passwordprotected for security while templates allow for customisation ofsettings such as the Windows workgroup or domain, SecurityIdentifier (SID) and so on. You can even deploy to differenthardware from that used to create the image, by adding the optionalUniversal Deploy module (£4.99 + VAT per PC).
There's quite a lot to get to grips with, but once you've workedout what's involved and how it all fits together it's not thatdifficult. Neither does it need much in the way of hardware to hostthe various components. Indeed in our tests we ran everything on anordinary desktop PC and were impressed with how well it worked.That said, it's very much a specialist tool, of most interest tosupport staff inside larger organisations tasked with configuringnew computers on a regular basis.