Partial distribution points possible?

[lps]

Hello all,

Problem explanation:

We would like to create a local images replication point on series of 250GB ssd thunderbolt drives in order to deploy a thin image onto approx 3000 macbook air's [sic]. - 5 drives imaging 5 mac's at a time. The problem is our main distribution point exceeds the size of our ssd drives.

Question:

Is it possible to manually copy to the external thunderbolt drive only the images (or compiled image and scripts) that we need (into the appropriate replication point folder structure of course) and deploy the thin image in that fashion?

Thanks in advance for your help.

LPS

[nessts]

you can replicate whatever you choose, and as long as you only use what you have everything will work well. I have "build" Macs that have the stuff to do imaging only in their local copy of CasperShare/Packages and imaging is much faster than over the network plus I do not have to have the full 80GB of software copied local that the entire CasperShare has.

[lwindram]

Absolutely not a problem. I have a variety of drive sizes that I use for imaging - the smallest is 64GB. I can't run my dual-boot images off of it, but I have plenty of space for my OS X only images.

A couple of things to be aware of:

• If you try to replicate to a drive that is too small, Casper Admin will not throw an error, it just considers replication finished.
• I have a few 1TB USB 3.0 physical drives. I replicate to them, then copy the needed packages onto my -smaller drives. I copy all of the data from the other folders - unless you are compiling configurations they won't use much space. Unfortunately Admin copies the packages first, then replicates the scripts; if you run out of space with packages, you may not have space to replicate all of your scripts.
• Even if your drives are large enough, it is still much faster to copy all of the packages locally. Replicate one drive, then copy the packages folder over to the second before replicating it. Even on an ethernet connection it takes nearly an hour for me to replicate to an SSD using Casper admin v. 10-15 minutes if I pre-copy the packages folder.

You may want to consider investing in some additional drives. I use everything from a thunderbolt SSD to a usb memory stick. The thunderbolt drives are faster, but I can buy a 4-6 USB drives for the cost of 1 Thunderbolt SSD. One person can keep up with 8-10 drives in a workflow that does not involve unboxing. Per person we can do between 175-225 devices in an 8-hour day with this setup.