This article describes the new features and changes in the OS Provisioning tool in LANDESK Management Suite 9.6.
The focus on changes for OS Provisioning in LDMS 9.6 has been geared towards simplifying the process.
The older "OSD" product has been removed from the product and has been fully replaced by the Provisioning product.
LANDESK Provisioning takes the previous OSD concepts and extends them even further LANDESK Provisioning offers true end-to-end Provisioning of a device from a "Bare Metal" metal state (No Operating System installed) to completely imaged, software installed, domain joined, LANDESK Agent installed, etc.
OSD is gone? What happens now?
There is no upgrade process for existing OSD Scripts. It will be necessary to create provisioning templates to perform the previous imaging tasks that OSD did. Remember, Provisioning is not just for deploying images. It can be used to distribute software, patch systems, execute scripts, etc.
The beauty of Provisioning is that you can chain an endless array of actions together.
New! Simplified template creation process
LDMS 9.5 and subsequent service packs simplified the Provisioning templates and consolidated previously complex actions.
LDMS 9.6 furthers this by include simple template creation "wizards" to build a template foundation.
Creating a capture job has been simplified down to 5 steps within a single dialog:
- Select “Capture Template” under “New Template”
- Select “Capture template”
- Select “Capture Image”
- Name the template and give it a description.
- Enter image file storage location.
Similarly, LDMS 9.6 has simplified creating a Deploy Image template into a single dialog:
New! "Smart Partitioning" actions
There are two new partitioning actions that are referred to as "Smart Partitioning" actions.
Auto Assign Partitions
- Assigns standard drive letters to OS and Boot partitions
- This action discovers the OS partition and possible separate boot partitions and automatically assigns them standard driver letters.
- Action results:
Windows 7 and higher with separate boot partition including all UEFI:
OS Partition will be mounted as C:
Boot partition will be mounted as S:
Windows XP and Windows 7 and higher with a separate boot partition:
OS/Boot partition will be mounted as C:
Create default partitions
- Assigns the default partitions for either UEFI or BIOS based computers.
- This action creates standard partitions as recommended for Microsoft operating systems (Windows 7 and newer)
- This prepares the disk for use with ImageX or other file based imaging tools. The action will detect UEFI and BIOS based computers and configure the partitions. Sector based imaging tools such as ImageW do not need this action.
- OS partition will be mounted as C:
- Boot Partition will be mounted as S:
LANDESK Provisioning takes advantage of the new "self-organizing" multicast. This and other improvements to the software distribution model provide drastically improved imaging and software deployment speeds.
New! "Installed Mapped Software" action
LANDESK Management Suite 9.6 offers a new "smart migration" feature that allows you to use your Software License Monitoring data to install or reinstall software as part of an imaging and system migration solution. IProducts can be linked to packages, and in turn called as a group through a single "Install Mapped Software" action.
In addition any standard LANDESK query can be created as a "product" within the Software Licensing Monitoring tool. An example of the use of this would be if you wanted to install software on laptops only, you could create a LANDESK query that would return results for only laptops.
"Smart migration" can also be used to upgrade or change software:
Examples:
Upgrade example: Map Office® 2010 to Office® 2013
Change software example: Map iTunes® to VLC Media Player
New! "Device Name Prompter" action
This action changes the %ldhostname% variable to what is typed in. This is to be run before an inject script action. When the "Device Name Prompter" action runs it will pop up a windows asking the operator to enter the desired computer nam.e
Improved! PXE Boot option configuration
- PXE Boot options have been moved from the "Configure Services" menu. They are now located in the OS Provisioning tool under the "Preboot" dropdown.
- Changes made to the PXE boot options take effect immediately, no need to redeploy a PXE representative. The client makes a web service call to download the F8 PXE Boot menu options.
New! Disconnected Provisioning
This new option allows you to deploy templates from a thumb drive.
To create, put in the USB device, right click the template, and choose “Create disconnected template”. (USB thumb drive will be formatted) . The template will deploy the image, do CTOS, install the agent (Self-contained.exe) and attempt any other action that does not require a core connection.
With connection to the core, Distribute Software, Patch System and other core-dependent actions will succeed.
New! "Launch Template" action
This new action is used in migration scenarios for migration from one computer to another computer. This action utilizes machine to machine mapping. The actions from the launched template are not included into the sections of the current template, it is run entirely just after the first template.
Improved! Change Changes to the "Wait" action
- You can now cancel a provisioning “Wait” action. Previously you had to wait until the timeout, or until the file existed that the Wait action was set to wait for.
- Wait actions are often used in troubleshooting to give someone a chance to into the command prompt in Windows PE to manipulate or view the file system or registry.
Improved! Various Enhancements
- Better resizing of Template UI
- Ability to copy and paste from template to template.
- Multiple templates can be open simultaneously
- Defaults to Windows PE for Boot Environment and Windows for Target OS rather than "
- Auto-naming of actions
- Action name and description shows on Client UI.
- History auto-refreshes.
- Wait UI can be cancelled.