Sogeti Group

Operating System Refreshes Go 10 Times Faster with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit

As an IT services consultancy with operations in 14 countries, Sogeti is helping organizations around the globe refresh desktop operating systems to the Windows® 7 operating system and refresh servers to Windows Server® 2008. The company needed an enterprise-grade deployment tool to help it perform the task of wiping the old operating system and installing the new one, while retaining user preferences and reloading applications—a process referred to as a refresh—across organizations. Sogeti is using the Microsoft® Deployment Toolkit 2010. The company has found that it can perform operating system refreshes more than 10 times faster using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit compared to third-party solutions it has used. The company also values the Deployment Toolkit because it can use it to perform automated refreshes from Windows XP directly to Windows 7.

Situation

Sogeti, a wholly owned subsidiary of Capgemini, is an international information technology consultancy specializing in local professional services that employs 20,000 people in 14 countries, with 6,000 in the United States.

The IT consultancy is a full-range provider of IT and management services with focus on application services, software control testing, infrastructure services and high-tech consulting. With the release of the Windows® 7 operating system (OS), Sogeti has begun helping enterprises move their client computing infrastructure from the Windows XP and Windows Vista® operating systems.

Using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010, we can perform refreshes 10 to perhaps 40 times faster across an enterprise, compared to some third-party tools we’ve used. Darren Baker National Director of Microsoft Infrastructure Solutions, Sogeti

One of the great challenges facing organizations that are moving to a new operating system is finding the most efficient way of accomplishing the task while minimizing the impact on users. The task of wiping the old operating system and installing the new one, while retaining user preferences and reloading applications—a process referred to as a refresh—across organizations, can be complicated when organizations lack a tight systems management plan.

“We have seen so many customers who have no systems management or maintenance plan in place try to refresh their systems and fail,” says Darren Baker, National Director of Microsoft Infrastructure Solutions at Sogeti, where he works with the company’s North American operations. “Problems can arise from the length of time between an organization’s maintenance cycles, inconsistent application of software patches, and individual users downloading applications and utilities—which can all enable systems to drift away from their baseline configurations.”

The result can be a refresh process that works for the base image but fails for the systems that are actually in use. Each operating system deployment can fail for a different reason, requiring so much time to explore, that organizations often give up on automated operating system deployment. “The result can be a return to a brute force deployment process of people going from computer to computer to refresh by hand,” Baker says. “This is when an operating system deployment project can spiral out of control, causing deployment costs to skyrocket.”

Organizations need a deployment toolkit that is flexible enough to create a standard process that can accommodate the system idiosyncrasies that are caused by configuration drift. “A deployment tool should also be flexible enough to make adjustments on a moment’s notice and be able to continue the deployment without reengineering the process and delaying a project,” Baker notes.

“Although third-party tools have been created to fill this need, few do it well,” Baker says. “It is difficult to find a complete solution. Some deployment tools require creating a separate image for each specific machine and user type. Others do a great job at reimaging and multi-streaming the operating system to the PC, but the user data backup requires a heavy touch. Others have no application layering process, so you need to purchase additional tools and do a great deal of custom engineering to create a complete solution.”

Cost also figures into the challenge. Baker notes, “When you have to pay per seat for deployment tools you will likely use only once, it can double an organization’s cost of deployment.”

As Sogeti prepared for what it anticipates will be a huge global demand for operating system deployment services—as organizations move to Windows 7 on the desktop and to Windows Server® 2008 on the back end—it sought the best set of deployment tools for its own workforce and its worldwide customers.

Solution

Sogeti is using the Microsoft® Deployment Toolkit 2010 (MDT), which provides a common console with the comprehensive tools and guidance needed to efficiently manage deployment of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 provides detailed guidance and job aids for every organizational role involved with large-scale deployment projects.

When you have to pay per seat for deployment tools you will likely use only once, it can double an organization’s cost of deployment. Darren Baker National Director of Microsoft Infrastructure Solutions, Sogeti

The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 is the newest version of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, a Solution Accelerator for operating system and application deployment. The new solution supports deployment of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, providing unified tools and processes required for desktop and server deployment in a common deployment console and collection of guidance.

Sogeti especially values the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit because it enables automated refreshes from Windows XP directly to Windows 7. “A large percentage of our customers are still running Windows XP,” says David DeGendt, Solutions Director of Microsoft Infrastructure Solutions, at Sogeti. “They need tools that can make it easier for them to get to Windows 7, and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit can help them to do that by automating the processes needed to make the transformation.”

The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit interoperates well with the Windows Automated Installation Kit. “Using MDT in conjunction with the Windows Automated Installation Kit provides you with imaging tools and user backup tools,” Baker says. “Using these tools together, you can back up the user’s data, lay down the new operating system, and restore the user’s data in minutes, instead of hours. This saves time and the cost of network storage and can decrease the overall cost of the deployment.”

Improvements to the newest version of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit include:

Support for new deployment shares. The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 combines deployment points and distribution shares into deployment shares. A deployment share can be stored on a local drive, on a network shared folder, or on a standalone distributed file system and does not have to be located on a specific computer. Just as with deployment points, deployment shares contain operating systems, applications, operating system packages, and device drivers.

Improved management model. Organizations can manage deployment shares from any computer that has the Deployment Workbench installed and has the appropriate NTFS file system permissions and network share permissions on the deployment share. Multiple deployment shares can be opened simultaneously in the Deployment Workbench.

Support for selecting groups of items within the Deployment Workbench. With selection profiles in the Deployment Workbench, items can be selected in the deployment share to be managed or applied as a unit. For example, a selection profile can be created that specifies the device drivers included for a specific make and model of target computers.

Support for hierarchical management of items in deployment shares. Hierarchical folder structures in the Deployment Workbench help organize and manage items such as operating systems, device drivers, and task sequences in deployment shares. This hierarchical structure allows groupings of items to be included in selection profiles.

Support for automation of management tasks using the Windows PowerShell™ command line interface. Most of the processing logic that was previously included in the Deployment Workbench has now been implemented in Windows PowerShell. The Windows PowerShell support allows for the automation of common management tasks and for using other user interfaces to perform management functions. Most management actions exposed in the Deployment Workbench can be performed in Windows PowerShell scripts.

Enhancements in task sequence steps and scripts. Task sequence steps and scripts now include improvements in diagnostics output, logging, network recovery logic, code formatting and structure, security, and Deployment Workbench wizard usability.

Improved security support. The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 supports the ability to refresh machines that use BitLocker® Drive Encryption without decrypting the target hard disks when deploying the Windows 7 operating system and protecting confidential information, such as passwords, which are stored in MDT 2010 configuration files.

A large percentage of our customers are still running Windows XP. They need tools that can make it easier for them to get to Windows 7, and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit can help them to do that by automating the processes needed to make the transformation. David DeGendt Solutions Director of Microsoft Infrastructure Solutions, Sogeti

Sogeti also frequently makes use of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007, which plays a central role in Microsoft’s vision for helping IT organizations benefit from self-managing, dynamic systems. “Using MDT we create deployment processes and OS images, have the flexibility to update them on the fly, and can then import these scripts into Microsoft System Center to take advantage of no-touch, automated deployment,” Baker says.

Benefits

Using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 enables Sogeti to perform operating system refreshes more than 10 times faster than using third-party solutions. The company values the Deployment Toolkit because it provides a consistent tool set for all customers, and its automation reduces the chance for human error. Sogeti has found that the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit enables a smooth transition from Windows XP directly to Windows 7, and the Toolkit supports ongoing maintenance.

Enterprise Deployments 10 Times Faster

Sogeti values the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit because it enables its consultants to work more efficiently, which makes for a better customer experience. “The biggest benefit we see from the MDT is that we can consistently deliver a deployment project on time and on budget,” says Chase Heath, Principal Consultant, Microsoft Infrastructure Solutions at Sogeti. “We don’t have to spend as much time engineering the process for deployment, and all of our consultants can share their custom scripts and tools because they all utilize the same MDT foundation.”

The consultants of Sogeti value the flexibility built into the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. The company’s experience with third-party deployment tools is that the tool drives the structure of the deployment. “Other tools force you into a mindset of ‘The tool works this way, so we have to do this first and we have to do that second,’" Heath says. “The MDT gives you powerful tools that can be used with greater flexibility to meet the needs of each deployment scenario. The MDT enables you to think logically about when events have to happen, and then customize existing scripts or create your own to get exactly the process you need.”

With the flexibility of the Deployment Toolkit, Sogeti consultants can deal with system drift and other surprises—obstacles that can otherwise send organizations back to the inefficiency of custom, manual installations.

“I've seen enterprise customers trying to do operating system refreshes by hand at night,” Baker says. “They may only be able to manage 10 to maybe 20 desktops in an evening because they require a lot of bandwidth to backup the user's data out to the network. Then they use a sector-based imaging tool to install the OS and move user data back off of the network to the desktop, so it creates a large amount of traffic on the network and it limits how many desktops they can get done in a night. When we use MDT in conjunction with the Windows Automated Installation Kit, we can do hundreds of systems in a night because the data never leaves the system. All the data is moved to another location on the hard drive and then the image is laid down. Using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010, we can perform refreshes 10 to perhaps 40 times faster across an enterprise, compared to some third-party tools we’ve used.”

Consistent Tool Set for All Customers

Sogeti—and its customers—benefit from the ability to use the same deployment tools from one engagement to the next. This compares to an alternative scenario in which customers would request that Sogeti use deployment tools they had already purchased or may have used in the past, requiring Sogeti consultants to use tools that weren’t as flexible or as powerful as the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.

“Microsoft gives away the MDT for free*, which means that we can use it on every single engagement that we work on and which greatly enhances the consistency of delivery when we're working with our customers,” Baker says. “This saves us from having to use inferior deployment tools that the customer might otherwise purchase and require that we use. Using poor tools would add to the time required, which would make for a more expensive engagement for the customer. With MDT we can say, ‘Don’t worry about purchasing deployment tools, we will furnish our own—for free.’”

The savings for the customer go far beyond the licensing costs of a third-party solution. “Some of the third-party deployment tools we’ve had to use in the past require a lot of human intervention for manual steps and are complicated to setup and modify,” Baker says. “Our consultants can work faster and more efficiently with the MDT, and this translates into significant savings for our customers.”

The biggest benefit we see from the MDT is that we can consistently deliver a deployment project on time and on budget. Chase Heath Principal Consultant, Microsoft Infrastructure Solutions, Sogeti

Another element of consistency comes from the fact that the same Microsoft Deployment Toolkit console used for refreshing desktop computers also is used for refreshing back-end servers. “Our consultants love the MDT and greatly appreciate the fact that everything they know about working with the console from desktop projects is directly transferable to server projects,” Baker says. “They don’t have to learn a new toolkit. Everything works the same because they are using exactly the same tool.”

Reduced Chance for Human Error

Sogeti consultants have found that the automation they can introduce to their projects by using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit reduces the chance for human error and consequent problems that can be difficult to research and resolve later.

“We tell our customers that one of the overlooked benefits of MDT automation is removing human error from the deployment equation,” Heath says. “In real-life situations, people get interrupted and distracted during the various tasks they are required to perform. The result is that steps can get skipped. Later, you can spend hours trying to determine why something isn’t working properly. By using MDT for the image build and deployment processes, you can automate the process and eliminate the human element. The more automation you introduce with MDT, the more control you can define in your project.”

Smooth Transition from Windows XP

Sogeti has good news for organizations still running Windows XP that would like to move directly to Windows 7. Using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, Sogeti can create an automated refresh process that clears the old operating system, installs the new one, and then restores applications, data, and user preferences.

“Using MDT, organizations can refresh their desktop computers directly from Windows XP to Windows 7,” DeGendt says. “That’s how we refreshed our desktops internally at Sogeti and it proved a huge time savings over the more conventional deployment process. We found that with a typical desktop with 5 gigabytes of user data, we could easily migrate a system from Windows XP to Windows 7 in just 30 minutes.”

Supports Ongoing Maintenance

The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit is such an effective set of tools that Sogeti recommends that organizations keep it ready to use even after a deployment project has been completed. “The MDT makes an excellent maintenance tool,” Baker says. “Long after the deployment has been completed you can use MDT to keep the infrastructure running properly. If a computer starts malfunctioning because of a software problem, instead of spending hours troubleshooting that system you can do an MDT light-touch refresh. You can just connect to that MDT share, run the Light Touch wizard, answer a couple of questions, and in less than 30 minutes or so you have a refreshed system up and running.”

In summary, Sogeti has found the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 to be a powerful solution that it can use to achieve operating system refreshes more than 10 times faster than when using some third-party solutions, and the company values the fact that it can use the Deployment Toolkit to automate operating system refreshes directly from Windows XP to Windows 7.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010
The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 provides a common console with the comprehensive tools and guidance needed to efficiently manage deployment of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.

For more information about the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010, visit the Web site at
www.microsoft.com/mdt

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For more information about Sogeti products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.sogeti.com

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