Best practice for RE-imaging labs...

[mconners]

Hi Folks,

So I am working on our plans for the summer and one of the big tasks is to re-image all of our lab Macs. This will be the first time I do this since we implemented Casper.

Should we leave the computers in the JSS but simply flush all of the policies for the computers? Should we delete all existence of the computers from the JSS and start fresh?

Just curious what other admins are doing with their labs?

Thanks again!!

Mick

[roiegat]

Pre-stage imaging is your friend in this case. So we have recovery partition which has an OS and Casper on it. When we want to reset the computer back to start state - we just tell it to reboot to this partition. Casper Imaging automatically opens and detects the Pre-stating stuff and images the machine. It reboots the machine and the next morning we come back to a fresh imaged machine ready for another fun day of testing.

[mconners]

Thank you @roiegat I have only played a bit with the pre-stage imaging aspect and I will certainly look into this in greater depth. What intrigues me is the recovery partition and having Casper Imaging running on it. I didn't know we could manipulate the recovery partition by loading Casper imaging into it and having it automatically open.

Is there a work flow on the web somewhere you could point me to? This sounds very helpful and interesting.

Thank you!

[stevewood]

@mconners two real quick clarifications. First, I believe @roiegat was referring to Autorun Data and not Pre-Stage Imaging. If you are not deleting the machines from the JSS, Pre-Stage will not work, as that is only for machines that are not in the JSS. For machines that are already in, like your current lab, you need to have Autorun Data saved for each machine. You can read more about Autorun Imaging here:

AutoRun Imaging

Second thing I believe Roie was communicating is that they created a hidden partition that contains an OS and recovery tools. Not that they had "changed" the Apple recovery partition. AFAIK, you cannot edit the Apple recovery partition.

[mconners]

Thank you @stevewood that makes total sense. We have AutoRun on every computer with the exception of employee computers, we don't want them to accidentally kick off Casper Imaging in any way, shape or form and wipe their Macs.

As for the hidden partition, this helps a lot because I didn't think we could edit the Apple Recovery Partition. Having a hidden partition does make sense. It would help booting locally rather than try everything off of NetBoot.

This is really helpful, I can plan and play with a new workflow this summer and see how it goes. Again, thank you!!

[Brad_G]

I haven't used this in a while (I need to reacquaint myself with it) but when you create a Configuration in Casper Admin there is a "Partitions" tab. When you add a partition you have an option to check called "Make the partition a Restore partition". Choose your OS image to put on it and Casper will set it up with the Casper Imaging application and configure everything to run upon boot. Basically it takes out the need for a NetBoot server and makes reloading labs much easier.