Once you’ve completed the setup of a DeployStudio server you’re going to want to use it to start imaging systems. In most cases you’ll want to start off with DeployStudio Admin, found with it’s brethren in /Applications/Utilities. When you first open DeployStudio Admin, you’ll be asked for a server address, username and password. Go ahead and log in as one of the (or the) user that you setup as an administrative account during installation, enter the address of the server (followed by the port you used with the DeployStudio Assistant – you can always rerun the assistant if you need to). By default the connection information should be available in the drop down menu to make this process a little easier.
Now you should see the following options:
- Activity – View DeployStudio events
- Computers – Lists computers by MAC Address to be imaged and import information
- Masters – Images currently located in the repository, where all of the images are stored. In order to populate the Masters list use the DeployStudio Runtime.
- Scripts – Central repository for scripts to be run during workflows
- Workflows – Configure the steps required to perform an installation
If you are migrating to DeployStudio from NetRestore you’ll be happy to learn that DeployStudio stores data in the same format that NetRestore stored data. The format of the .csv file should be (per line with no colons present in the MAC address):
MACAddress,computername,hostname
The DeployStudio Runtime is used to play workflows. The workflows that can be played could include a workflow to capture an image or one to put one onto your desktops, as would be typical for mass deployment. You can run the DeployStudio Runtime manually from Mac OS X as well, which allows you to test the workflows that you have built to restore (play) images onto a local Firewire or USB drive. Let’s look at using the runtime to create a master (base image) from a source volume. Open the DeployStudio Runtime and authenticate into your server. Then click on the Create a master from a volume button and click on the Play button.
Next, provide the specifics for creating the image. Select a source hard drive to base our image on. Place a name for the image in the Image Name: field. Set your image Type to Read Only for now and then enter the format for the file system of the image (for OS X machines, this will pretty much always be HFS+). Once you’re ready, click on the Play button to begin building an image of the hard drive. DeployStudio will automatically clean out the unique information for the machine (ie – LocalKDC) and build the image when played.
