[Casper] imaging a large group via NetBoot- Casper

[Thomas Larkin]

I am getting read to do a mass image of about 6,000 Macs over the
Summer.  At my previous job last year I helped reimage 10,000 machines
(mostly windows boxes) over our Summer break.  I wrote a simple shell
script with Zen Imaging (Novell) that ran at netboot and automated a lot
of the steps needed to reimage a machine.  

I have found it best practice if you are going to do this, just go ahead
and buy a few big "dumb" switches, with no management on them at all. 
Hook your machines up to the "dumb" switch and start to netboot.  With
things like Port Fast and Spanning Tree I think you definitely get
overhead from your managed switches.  We were unicasting everything
since we could never get multicasting to quite work right (mainly due to
the managed switches making it take longer).  

We didn't have time to fuss with it so we just unicasted machines. 
10,000 over a 2.5 month period isn't too shabby.

This year I plan on doing the same.  Getting an area where I can run
power and a dumb switch and reimage like 50 at a time with very simple
non managed networking.  

Also, if you are using a lower spec machine that is unicasting say, 20+
connections pushing out a 6+ gig image it is going to take a while. 
Since each connection will take up resources from the netboot server.

Thomas Larkin
TIS Department
KCKPS USD500
tlarki at kckps.org
cell:  913-449-7589
office:  913-627-0351
>>> "Shawn Surma" <Shawn_Surma at liverpool.k12.ny.us> 05/19/08 8:34 AM >>>
We are using Casper with a Netboot server and only one Casper server for
the packages.  It seems to be taking a very long time to image MacBooks
out of the box.  What kind of numbers has anyone else been getting?  
If I do just 1 or 2 it will complete in about 45 minutes, if I step it
up
to more than 7 the time goes to over 3 hours. If I add more servers for
the packages will that help?

Any ideas, suggestions or hints would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
        Shawn


Liverpool Central School District
Computer Services
Liverpool, NY 13090
(315) 622-7150

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