UIU Blog

The situation
Spread among the 12 physical locations, the Milwaukee Public Library has approximately 850 desktops and an increasing number of laptops (currently 350). MIS Manager Corey Megal leads a team of three people who are responsible for maintenance, imaging and deployment, and configuration of the library's PCs. In an effort to standardize imaging, the library predominantly purchases Dell desktops and HP laptops. Of the 350 laptops, approximately 240 are for public use. Of the 850 desktops, the split between staff and public use is almost exactly 50/50.

The challenge
Even though the library had standardization in mind with their Dell desktops and HP laptops, they found themselves with at least five different models of each. In addition to managing images for all 10 unique models, the MIS team also maintained a unique image for both the staff machines and the machines used by the public. This meant that Corey and his team were managing fifteen or more images at one time. Each of the public image configurations was required to be considerably more restrictive for daily public use, and contained software configurations that were completely different from the staff machines.

The stark disparity of image configuration between staff and public PCs meant there was nothing that could be done to reduce the number of images on hand. Aside from the obvious physical space requirements to house that many images, the primary issue was the time required to make sure each image contained the latest Microsoft updates, drivers, and configuration needed, and then successfully deploy each image to the corresponding hardware.

The solution
Back in 2002, Corey attended a Symantec Ghost training session conducted by software developer and Ghost training specialists at Big Bang LLC. At the end of this class that he was first introduced to the Universal Imaging Utility (UIU).

The UIU is the only software application able to work in conjunction with Windows OS deployment solutions such as Ghost, Altiris, Acronis, SCCM, and ImageX to deliver a hardware-independent image to any PC regardless of manufacturer. Because of this capability, Corey and his team were able to reduce the number of images they had to maintain from 15 to two: one for the PCs used by the public and one for the staff.

The images are now easy to keep updated, and Corey knows that he always has a current image ready for deployment. This is particularly important because the library uses re-imaging not only for troubleshooting and new hardware, but also to push out essential updates.

The future
Going forward, the MIS team will continue to use a simple set of best practices recommended by Big Bang. After preparing a master PC (including OS, software, and applicable configuration), the team captures an image of that machine before running the UIU. This pre-UIU capture is recommended because of Microsoft's limitations on the number of times you can Sysprep an image. In addition, retaining a pre-Sysprep master allows the MIS team to return to this image for updates.

Once that pre-Sysprep image is put aside for future use, the MIS team runs the UIU on the master PC. The UIU prepares the operating system for hardware-independent imaging, loads a driver database of over 40,000 Plug-and-Play IDs, invokes Sysprep, and shuts down the master PC. In approximately ten minutes, the master PC will be readied for image capture and deployment to the hardware of their choice.

When the time comes to update the two images — one configured for the public and the other for the staff PCs — the team will simply put the original image back down, run the necessary updates, capture a pre-Sysprep image to save for next time, run the UIU on the master PC, and capture and deploy. Just a couple of hours a month, including the time to pull down the updates, allows the Milwaukee Public Library MIS team to have updated and complete hardware independent PC image on hand at all times.