OK, I have a new task from the boss. He mentioned using some kind of RIP (?) of just a set of application installs that can be applied to a base OS image. So the Sales guys get the base image and the sales application package, the dev guys get a different set of apps.

Sounds cool, but I can't find any info on this, if it's even possible, other than using something like Symantec Ghost's AI Builder. I've always just used Ghost, or PowerQuest, and never really got into RIS or BDD. Has anyone heard of a process like this or know what tools you can use to do it?

Easy use sysprep and an app like WPI www.wpiw.net (Also found on this forum) and voila you have a image that has selectable apps installations from the first boot.

Unless I am totally miss-understanding you.

I'm not sure if that's it but it looks great and something worth checking out.

From what I gathered, he seemed to be talking about a single pkg/file/delta that you could apply to the base image. But he's also relaying info from people doing this (or fantasizing about it) in another group, so there may be some distortion in the translation. He just mentioned this and I haven't been able to find out who's doing somthing similar, if they are, and talk with them first hand. So I figured I'd see what was already out there from all the other MSFN members. Once I find out more details I'll post it, but I know I've heard of something like this before, but just didn't have time to look into it and can't remember any details.

I know in AI Builder you could, theoretically, run all your app installs and package that up into a single install. But I wouldn't enjoy stepping through that AI Builder script to parse out the junk and clean it up. At least I have something to check out and get me a little closer. If this turns out to be what I think it is, it may be a better option than a single package since apps are changing so frequently.

I'll think that he meants something similar to this.

http://www.smartdeploy.com/products/index.htm

**** Thats expensive!!

Thankfully it's not coming out of my pocket! But it does seem to be closer to what he was talking about. Seems like a lot of admin overhead for that tho...

I'm looking at WPI now and I think I like that solution better.

If your looking for a deployment solution you can try Business Desktop Deployment 2007.

There is also Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) which works with Windows XP. This is much better for small orginizations which don't need all the features of BDD. You basically build a WinPE 2.0 bootable CD and use it and imageX to create/restore hard drive images.
o You can create multiple HD images in a single file. This results in a single file that is much smaller than multiple images would by as duplicate files are only stored once.
o You can mount the image and edit the file contents.
o You can integrate patches without having to recreate the image (although I haven't done this yet).

Capturing a custom Image using ImageX and a Generic WinPE Disk
Adding Applications to BDD
Building a Windows XP Image in BDD 2007 Part 1
IT Idiots has some video on using BDD.

I'd think of something like enteo NetInstall, OCSInventory, wpkg ...
Would be a unattended setup (eg. running a application setup package with predefined answers) good enough?
That would be the preferable option. Other than that, the most non-MS software deployment solutions feature a 'snapshot' system. Ie. they collect information before and after you run a setup package and write the differences in files and registry into their deployment project. (however, I'd personally put more faith into the installer logic by the guys who made the software you are about to install)

The concept with the 3 deployment apps is like this:

• create OS image with app deploy client
• apply image and do individual config (i.e. computername and network setup)
• the app deployment system runs the unattended setups or applies snapshots