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Moving from MS Deployment Toolkit - Unattended installs, driver packs and application installs

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We're currently using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit to deploy our "golden image" to 21 Windows 10 PCs. (And across a total of 4 different PC models). Advantages of MDT I'm trying to determine if it's supported in Snap Deploy (or if there's another recommended way around it)

  1. Unattended installs (MDT uses autounattend.xml files)
    •  Assigning the workstation name
    • Joining the workstation to a domain
  2.  Driver packs
    • MDT supports PC model specific folders. Each folder contains the drivers for that PC model. At deployment time, MDT queries the PC model and deploys the drivers from that model's driver folder.
  3. Application deployment 
    • MDT supports application deployment after the image is installed but we keep it simple here. Most applications are already contained in the golden image deployed. However, there a handful of simple apps that can be installed from the command line we find convenient to deploy after the image is installed.

Thanks for any help / info you can provide about your product

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Hello LookinAround,

thank you for your posting! I think Acronis Snap Deploy 6 should be a good fit for your use cases. My comments inline:

  1. Unattended installs (MDT uses autounattend.xml files)
    •  Assigning the workstation name
    • Joining the workstation to a domain

      Both supported. You can define all individual machine settings including Machine name and membership
       

  2.  Driver packs
    • MDT supports PC model specific folders. Each folder contains the drivers for that PC model. At deployment time, MDT queries the PC model and deploys the drivers from that model's driver folder.

      Several options possible. One of them - Acronis Universal Deploy (features allows adding the crucial Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) and mass-storage device drivers when deploying onto the dissimilar hardware). The second options would be setting the Files to transfer (This setting determines the list of files, such as installation files, to be transferred to all target machines after the deployment.)
       

  3. Application deployment 
    • MDT supports application deployment after the image is installed but we keep it simple here. Most applications are already contained in the golden image deployed. However, there a handful of simple apps that can be installed from the command line we find convenient to deploy after the image is installed.

      Files to transfer will cover this requirement as well 

      Please let me know, if you have any questions. I'd also recommend looking at a free trial version of Acronis Snap Deploy 6. 
       

 

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Posts: 250
Comments: 7092

You are welcome! If any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us or start a new discussion on forum.