timo.schaffner

Q: Edit or Update NetRestore Image

Hi Everybody

 

I am assistant Head of IT of a medium business, we are running around 80-90 macs here, pretty much all are up to date or running atleast Yosemite.

 

As of now, we are setting up new machines using a Carbon Copy Cloner Image we did a while back, from which we can boot from and then copy it to the local disk of the computer. We do this over USB. So we connect the clone, which is just a simple SSD, over USB to the new Mac, boot the image containing a ton of Software and settings and then copy that with the also in the image preinstalled Carbon Copy Cloner to the local disc.
This works like a charm, and when we need to update the clone, we simply connect it over USB to any Mac and then run updates and software installs or change settings, and once we're done we just shut it down, and it's ready to be cloned.

 

Now we wan't to change to NetRestore for that. I have managed to test different scenarios by using the System Image Utility, by just creating a NetRestore image and deploying that over NetInstall. This works very good, but the big problem here is that if we need to update that image, or change a setting, we need to completely write a new image every time, and this is time consuming as we always need to connect the SSD Clone to a mac and then write the new image from that mac and copy it to our deployment machine. So my question is, and i am sure other people have asked that question before, but i haven't really found an answer so far: Can you somehow boot into the NetRestore image, without restoring it, OR, can you create a NetBoot Image, boot into that, update that NetBoot image, and then CONVERT the NetBoot image into a NetRestore image? In my Opinion, that would make the most sense, so we can always choose to NetBoot into the NetBoot image, change and update stuff, and then just convert that into a NetRestore image which gets copied to the machine.

 

I know that there is Deploy Studio, but **** i haven't been able to figure out a single simple thing on that app, it's beyond complicated...

 

Thanks for your answers, maybe someone knows the best way to handle that!

 

Cheers

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11), Profilemanager, Netinstall, NetBoot

Posted on Jan 6, 2016 5:41 AM

Close

Q: Edit or Update NetRestore Image

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

Previous Page 2
  • by cdhw,

    cdhw cdhw Jan 8, 2016 8:21 AM in response to timo.schaffner
    Level 4 (2,653 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Jan 8, 2016 8:21 AM in response to timo.schaffner

    Er, yes. If you create a workflow and specify a particular image that's the image it will use until you modify the workflow to select an alternative one, which is a ten second job. I have nearly a dozen images for various reasons, it would be chaos if workflows tried to magically guess which one to use.

     

    You can also duplicate workflows and edit/rename the duplicate, which can save a lot of labor.

     

    C.

Previous Page 2