Welcome to Putting it All Together!
A Document and Video series for Deployment Solution 7.1!
Updated / Finalized October 28, 2013
In hopes of removing some of the mystery and challenge of Deployment Solution 7.1, this series was developed.
As time will allow, I'll try to do the same for the 7.5 release. For now, consider the content in this specific version / series to be closed. Future released content will all focus on 7.5
Contents:
- Overview of the document series
- Simplified How-To Documents and Videos
- Advanced Use & Customization Documents and Videos
- Troubleshooting Documents and Videos
Overview of this document series:
The Goal?
- To demonstrate visually how to use and troubleshoot the product with Video demonstrations
- To give step-by-step instructions in how to use the product via Getting Started white-papers
- To explain how the product works for advanced users
- To provide advanced product troubleshooting and/or functionality through scripts, samples, detailed white papers, and video presentations.
- To add use-case scenarios to help in understanding how Deployment Solution will fit in your environment
- To add depth and breadth to the currently published documentation
- To demonstrate how to fix or work-around current issues in the product
- To improve the overal "user experience" or ROI of the product.
- To reduce your need to call Support!
Simplified How-To Documents and Videos
| Links | Title, Brief Description, and Content explanation |
|---|---|
Title: Putting It All Together: Getting Started (Quick Start) Guide Congratulations on purchasing Deployment Solution 7.1. This document, and the related videow, are designed to help you get started with the product. Small companies, or companies building a lab is the target of this content. This is a significant upgrade to the old Support Quick Start guide in the KB, and like that guide, is meant to help anyone new with the product get going. There are other sections dedicated to troubleshooting and/or more advanced functionality. Content: Document: includes Preparation & Testing,Scalability issues, a brief on Hierarchy considerations, a Step-by-step quick-start to getting up and running, and some common issues. The Videos mostly follow or enhance the Step-by-step guide in the document:
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Title: Putting It All Together: The Best of Two Versions - DS 6.9 and 7.1 When deciding to upgrade, or even simply which version to use, there are many questions, and concerns, including supportability, migration, and the pros and cons of both product versions. This document hopes to help unwind that problem and assist you in making the right choice for you. It is designed for anyone comparing the two products for any reason, such as pre-sales, migration either direction, or perhaps those using the two in tandem. Content The document covers the topics below. There are no reasonable ways to capture this in videos.
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Advanced Use & Customization Documents and Videos
| Links | Title, Brief Description, and Content explanation |
|---|---|
| Article_&_Installer | Title: DS 7.1 Samples! This is a set of samples that can be installed into the product. There is limited support for these because they're not from Dev, but it's a good starting point for getting to know the product, and do a bit of custom work with it as well. |
| Document | Title: DS 7.1 Dataflow and Architecture (Updated July 2013) This presentation-like document is a deep-dive into the inner workings of the product. It's very useful for both explaining what is (or is not) happening, and for troubleshooting. The Architecture part of the document attempts to describe most of the product that otherwise you'd never see or know about, with details beyond what the standard documentation provides. The Dataflow section then breaks down the processes themselves in a dataflow format where you can see what happens first, and who talks to whom. |
Title: Putting it All Together: Scaling Deployment Solution to the Enterprise DS works, but how do you make it work across a HUGE organization? Far-flung Sites? Multiple SMP Servers? Will DS work with Hierarchy and if so, with what limitations? Mid-scale to large companies who want to ensure reasonable performance and compatibility of Deployment Solution with their needs will be interested in this document. It is designed to assist in the planning stages to ensure mistakes are not made that may become costly. Content:
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Video Title: Putting It All Together Video: Customizing Policies This video demonstrates the "good" way to modify the built-in policies for DS for pilot testing and/or hierarchy scenarios. It also shows how to overcome a problem where a policy may be missing a package link. | |
Video Title: Hardware Independent Imaging in DS 7.1 This Three-part video mini-series will discuss essentially the two parts to HII or Hardware Independent Imaging as used in Deployment Solution 7.1. Part 1 (Complete!) is an overview of what it is and how to achieve it, mostly dealing with the front-end of the process and assuming all goes well. Part 2 (Complete!) is a deep-dive into how to get the most from DA, common issues, getting around limitations, debugging, etc. It was long enough we had to split it up. | |
| HOWTO85100 | Video Title: Using WinPE 3.1 and 4.1 with DS 7.1 (unsupported) CANCELLED!! - instead, we have a KB with an "official" support of PE 4.1 in DS (including UEFI support): HOWTO85100 |
| Video | Video Title: Customizing WinPE for your environment This video will show how to add elements to WinPE for greater usability while in automation, including adding a thin-version of PCA for remote control (useful for remote imaging), and using BGInfo for system identification. |
| Title / Link | Description |
|---|---|
| Article | Title: Task to capture logs from Automation To aid in troubleshooting, here's a task you can build to capture all your automation logs including those from Windows post-imaging if need be. |
| Video | Video Title: Troubleshooting in WinPE Meant to demonstrate most of the basics of finding what's going on while in automation, if it's NOT what you expected! There's a very good chance this will solve your problems, but if not, you'll be very well prepared to call support |
| Video | Video Title: Putting It All Together Videos: Troubleshooting Packages in DS 7.1 Meant to help you understand how DS packages work, are unique compared to others, and how to troubleshoot specific issues related to them, including some known issues around missing packages, retrying downloads, an extra Backslash that appears in images, and problems when upgrading automation folders. |