So I’m all for the convenience of imaging operating systems, but from time to time there’s a price to pay for that convenience.
For example: I’m using an imaged version of Windows 2008 Enterprise X64 on two blade servers to create a two-node cluster. I built these images so I know they’re solid. The problem is that when running the validation tests, it fails telling me I have a duplicate MAC address and IP (in this case “Local Area Connection* 11”).
After some snooping in the registry, I learned that this particular Local Area Connection was cluster related. How can that be? I didn’t create a cluster yet! Well, in my infinite wisdom, I pre-installed the cluster feature on my master Windows 2008 image. Apparently, this creates a hidden cluster adapter with a unique MAC address. If you deploy another server using this image, that MAC address is no longer unique!
After removing the cluster feature and re-installing it on one of the nodes, the validation report ran without a hitch.
Even when little “annoyances” crop up like this one, in my opinion imaging operating systems still outweighs the price.
-Jeff K.
I agree Jeff! We used to image our classroom PCs every other day at my old job. I could only imagine the effort involved if I were to manually deploy 50-100 PCs every 2 days.
ReplyDelete~Matt