Rebuild machines on a schedule

tkimpton
Valued Contributor II

Hello

This might be of interest to people. I have 4 machines rebuilding out of hours every night so that I always have freshly built machines. This is how I do it.

  1. In the jss set up the NetBoot settings

  2. I have all machines set via mcx to power up at 3am and shutdown at 6.30am.

  3. I create a static group called Storage machines and select the machines manually to add to the group I wish to build every night.

  4. I make sure the machines have auto run imaging data to automatically build.

  5. I then create a policy to reboot immediately to NetBoot and do not execute between 6.30am and 3am with a every 15 trigger scoped to the Storage Machines static group, running once every day.

  6. If I need to issue one of the computer immediately in the day if someone's computer has died or they need a freshly built machine, I have a procedure stuck up on the wall in the build area guiding support to remove the machine from the Storage Machine group BEFORE they take it away to the user. They would then need to replace the machine they have just taken and add it to the static Storage Machines group and make sure it has auto run data for imaging and Casper Imaging is set to image the computer automatically.

5 REPLIES 5

Lincoln
Contributor

Thanks for that Tim,

I'm interested in your policy which causes the machines to NetBoot. Are you using a script to achieve this? If not how are you doing it? If so can you share your script?

I'm at the point where I'd like to be able to do this. For example, on Friday as I was leaving for the day I Netbooted a machine which had autorun data saved for it. Unfortunately the config in the autorun data was incorrect. I'd like to be able to set a policy to trigger it to NetBoot having edited it's autorun so that it is ready to go on Monday morning when I get there.

On my list of things to do for this week was writing a script for this but if you have one already I could use that would just be less time spent on things I don't really have times for.

Thanks

Lincoln

tkimpton
Valued Contributor II

I just use a policy scope to my static Storage machines group to restart immediately from a startup disk NetBoot.

Lincoln
Contributor

Thanks Tim,

Now I see it. Obviously something I missed during the Jump Start. I just jumped on the JSS (What else would I be doing on a Sunday afternoon) and found the setting. Simple when you know it's there. 80)

I've set the policy now but the machine hasn't checked in since Friday evening so it must have shut down. Still gonna have to boot it on Monday morning.

I have my machines set to wake then shut down weekdays around 5pm. The reason for this is that we often have students who walk away from their machines without logging out. I can see this preference coming in handy for re-imaging and other tasks I want to perform in the absence of users.

I'm still fairly new to JSS, we had our training in November so I'm still discovering the things it can do. I think I've barely scratched the surface so far.

Thanks again.

Lincoln

HSICT
New Contributor II

That's a pretty neat solution. Though I am confused by the "I have all machines set via mcx to power up at 3am and shutdown at 6.30am" point. Where exactly is this MCX? Did you create it yourself? I've been through everything likely, without success.

Matt
Valued Contributor

Couldn't you use something like Deep Freeze also?