Two hundred PCs and two technicians
A college must build 200 PCs over the summer. Doing each by hand takes an hour. That is 200 hours for two people.
Three ways of building PCs cut that time. Each has a price. Your job is to pick the right one.
Key words
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Deployment | getting a system and its software onto many computers |
| Unattended install | an install that runs by itself from answers set in advance |
| Answer file | a file that holds the answers an installer would ask for |
| Image | a saved copy of a whole system, ready to put on other computers |
| Thin image | a small image with the system only; software is added at install time |
| Base image | an image with the system, software and settings already in it |
| Task sequence | a list of steps run in order during a build |
| Driver | a small program that lets the system use a piece of hardware |
| Maintenance | the work of keeping something up to date and working |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can describe unattended installs, thin imaging and base images, with their strengths and weaknesses.
Starter
Have a go
Starter
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Unattended installation
An unattended install runs with almost no help from the technician. The answers to every question are set in advance in an answer file. The installer reads them and gets on with it.
The technician starts it and walks away. It saves time, and every PC gets the same answers.
Check: unattended installs
Have a go
Check: unattended installs
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.