Auto Populated Snap-Ins
-
There are autopop settings for newly register machines such as ImageID association, OS association, whether or not AD should be enabled by default, etc.
It would be very helpful if I was able to choose default snapin(s) to associate with new machines.
Example:
You use SoftwareX for anti-virus, and you install that on machines via snapin. You want each new lab PC to have that snapin. Currently, once you’ve registered all the machines with FOG, you must either enable that snapin for each machine manually, or put all machines in a group and enable the snapin that way (which isn’t always an option because you don’t ALWAYS get a whole room of PCs at the same time).
It would be nice to just have to register the PC with FOG, and, by default, FOG enables the SoftwareX snapin with each new machine. -
Your image should contain most applications by default.
i.e. an Anti-virus suite is a requirement and will (should) not differ between your hosts
-
We use MSE for anti-virus, and I’ve had nothing but problems when pre-installing it on the image I push out.
If I do pre-install it, when a user logs (student) in, they get a popup box for MSE, something about finishing the install process I believe.
Also, as for “…and will (should) not differ between your hosts”, if a piece of software shouldn’t differ between hosts, isn’t that more of a reason to allow a snap-in to be applied to all hosts like my idea?Lastly, I like to have anti-virus and other software available via snapin rather than pre-installed for many reasons:
[LIST=1]
[]The process of having FOG push the image out to multiple PCs takes less time because the image is smaller than if the snapins were pre-installed. The snapins need to install afterwards, yes, but when imaging 60+ PCs with a 10 PC queue, the most important thing is getting the image deployed on each machine fast so that a spot in the queue opens up for the next machine.
[]It’s nice to have a piece of software deployable via snapin remotely for well, remote systems you don’t have access to or don’t want to physically go to, or for ease and scheduling. Example: a professor has a different anti-virus on a laptop he brings in, he decides he wants to switch to the anti-virus we use. He uninstalls old anti-virus, I add the snapin to his PC in FOG then deploy it, it installs in the background silently while he works, or his office is locked, or whatever.
[*]What if you decide to change anti-virus (or another piece of software, i.e. Office)? If its preinstalled, then you have to go back to an image backup, uninstall the anti-virus software, install the new software, sysprep it back up, re-upload it, change imageid for all the PCs that were using old software to newly uploaded imageid, re-deploy to all PCs. Whereas if its a snapin, you just create the new snapin, remove the old snapin from all PCs, add the new snapin to all PCs, redeploy.
[/LIST]
For these reasons, and others, I support the idea of having hardly any applications pre-installed on my image. I’m open to hearing rebuttals and reasons for the contrary, however.