[geeks] MS SBS Server - issues and questions

[Brian Dunbar]

Hey,

I've picked up a part time job (hooray for keeping busy) with a local
integrator.  My role is to 'flip' his new clients from whatever ad-hoc
mess they'd been using* to SBS 2003.

One of these is okay - but I can see that a great deal of my time is
going to be spent watching SBS install.  Naturally my mind turns to ways
to reduce the boring bits.

Ghost is expensive but g4u** seems like a decent alternative.  Plus it's
BSD so we can put my unix skillz*** to work.

The big problem is SBS.  After pushing the image you'd need to change a
hundred little settings inside the OS for the new customer.  Bob reports
that he's looked into this a few months ago and gave up in despair - too
many weird setting in odd places and the result never seemed to work right.

Is Bob right?  Surely somewhere has had this problem and come up with a
solution, but my Google skills have failed me in this regard.  A script?
 Registry hack?  Black magic?  If I could just _do_ this then we'd cut
the time down to flip a client from 'all damned day' to 'reasonable'.

Okay, yes, the downside is that I - and thus Bob - wouldn't make as
much.  But the upside is I'd spend more time doing 'interesting' things
and less staring at crawly progress bars.


* This weekend's client had installed W2K Pro on a Dell PowerEdge for
example.

** http://fbim.fh-regensburg.de/~feyrer/g4u/

*** d00d.

-- 
Brian Dunbar
System Administrator
Liftport - The Space Elevator Company

brian.dunbar at liftport.com
aim: bdunbar1967

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Remember.
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