Windows disk cloning and automatic server installation
During development, testing, and deployment, I have a need to fully automate the configuration of a Windows 2003 server.
I am trying to find the best way to automatically redirect the server that installs the OS, software dependencies that I have (e.g. SQL server, .net framework + my own application code).
From what I've found, there are two approaches to this problem:
- Disk cloning (also known as disk images). Using tools like Ghost, Acronis.
- Automatic installation of OS + SW. Using RIS (now called WDS) or Unattended , it basically does an unattended OS installation and then automatically installs all necessary software on first boot (using various command line flags for Windows installation managers like MSI, InstallSheld.
Benefits of automatic installation:
- The advantage is that all installation and configuration is documented in scripts / configurations that create an unattended installation.
- These scripts / configuration can be under version control.
- Using DriverPacks can provide installation flexibility on almost any hardware.
Invalid settings:
- Take much longer to fully deploy.
- More work to get done than disk cloning where you just have to install, manually configure the server and then clone it.
Disk cloning profiles:
- Less work to create clones.
- Fast deployment.
Partitioning disk cloning:
- It is very difficult to keep track of configuration / setup changes that occurred prior to cloning since none of them are scripted.
- The resulting deployment is not as "clean" as zeroing, requiring the use of SysPrep or the like.
- Hardware / driver issues can arise when recovering a clone disk on new hardware.
I know this is not really a programming question (although it takes some coding to write an unattended Windows + S / W setup), but this is something we should all do from time to time, and we might as well come up with a better way to do it.
Edit: More information on the situation: Virtualization is a good option for development, but for testing and especially for stress testing, you need to use real hardware with fast disks.
You must develop a Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005 server device and an internal application. So it will be deployed in a development and test house and eventually sold to customers.
So basically what I'm asking is: What is the recommended way to set up development, test and production servers? Cloning disk? Automatic installation? A combination of both?
source to share
I don't know if this is an option in your case, but another thing to seriously consider is virtualization.
Virtualization basically has all the benefits of disk cloning, but you don't have any hardware / driver issues.
If you take snapshots at the right times in your base virtual machine, you can go back to any point in time by setting the base image.
The cost, of course, is that virtualization requires little performance.
source to share
I know this is an older post, but since it came up in my search, I thought it might come up for someone.
When snapshots are taken from a VM, they are often saved as a .vhd file, which is essentially an image and can be written to a real hard drive. if you set up the OS in vm you can take a snapshot and transfer it to another vm host or even install it on real hardware.
using a virtual machine like HyperV or VMWare does not require or use additional hardware drivers, so the first time it boots on real hardware it should be able to pull the drivers and work (in a perfect world), realistically using Device Manager should help you find drivers that are not installed after installation.
source to share