Transcription
Hello everyone, welcome back to the channel.
For today's video, I will be showing you how we image our computers at work. This has been requested on the channel, and I think it's also a good idea to share with those who have not done imaging at work yet or those who are getting started in it on how imaging works and looks like.
So in today's video, I'll be showing you different ways on how we image computers and the basics of imaging. If you're interested in today's video, please keep on watching, and without further ado, let's get started.
Computer imaging is simply the process of installing an operating system, applications, and settings onto a device. There are different ways to image computers, and I'm going to show you how we do it at work.
The first method is through the PXE server, and the second one is through a USB drive. The process for PXE server is pretty simple. Depending on how PXE is set up in your environment, the only thing you're going to need is a network connection and to make sure that you're on the correct VLAN on the port that you're connecting to.
It's the most efficient way of imaging because all you need is the network. Most of the time, imaging is done through the PXE server because it's more efficient, especially if we are doing mass imaging for a lot of devices or a couple of devices.
Before I show you how to image through PXE, I'm going to show you first how PXE works. But first, let's talk about what PXE is. It stands for Pre-Boot Execution Environment, and it's a tool for deploying disk images over a network.
Okay, so this is how PXE works. First, the client machine is set to boot from the network. When it starts up, it sends out a DHCP request over the network seeking an IP address. Then the DHCP server responds with an IP address and additional information, including the location of the PXE boot server.
Using the information from the DHCP server, the client then establishes a connection with the TFTP server and requests the boot file. The TFTP server sends the boot file to the client machine, which is loaded into the client's memory.
Once it's loaded into the client's memory, we can now start the process for our imaging or the OS installation.
The first step is to connect the target computers to the network. For example, I'm going to image this computer here, so I'm going to make sure that I do have a network connection. I'm just connecting an Ethernet cable here and making sure that you're in the correct VLAN that can reach the PXE server.
For the second step, this is selecting the boot menu during startup. Once you power on the machine, go to the BIOS settings. This usually depends on the machine, and for HP and Lenovo, you have to press the F12 button. The key here is to make sure that you are going through the network boot.
For example, for this Lenovo X1 Carbon laptop, F1 is used to enter the BIOS setup. It's different for every make and model of the computer. Once you've entered the BIOS settings, go to the Startup tab, and under the network boot, make sure that the LAN is selected.
Once your boot menu is all set for network boot, when you exit the BIOS, you should see that it should enter the network boot. After that, this also depends on how your PXE is set up, but just select that you want to connect to the network.
Usually, we just wait for the PXE image to load to our computer and then follow the process we have for our company. Sometimes it takes a while to load all of the images to our computer before we get started with the process, but that's normal because it's over the network.
Once everything is loaded, we typically have to enter a password to get started with the installation. It's important to have a password to prevent a non-admin from imaging their own computer, for example, if they're trying to mess with the BIOS.
The next step would be selecting the appropriate image for the respective machine. For example, we typically have different images for different types of computers. We have an image for our edit computers, which has all of the Adobe applications, and for the regular users, they just have the standard applications without the Adobe.
The next step would depend on your company if you do this during the imaging process, but we put the hostname during the imaging process and also the description on Active Directory just in case we forget after it's done imaging.
Once you're done with all of the processes, the next step is just to wait until the image is completed. There are times that we have to image computers through a USB drive, and that's if the PXE server is down, for example, or offline, or there's something with the PXE server that you can't reach.
So another way to image is through a USB drive, which is a more manual way, but it's an option, especially if the PXE server is not available. Sometimes we use the USB drive method if we are just imaging a generic computer. We don't have to use the custom image that we prepare for work, or if we have a really special image that we are just going to use for one computer or very few computers, then we can use the USB method.
The first step when imaging through a flash drive is to create a bootable USB drive. Creating a bootable USB drive also depends on the system that your company is using. We typically go to the software library and then create a bootable media.
Then, of course, select bootable media from the options and then click on next. It will take you to a window where it's going to ask you to choose the removable drive or your USB drive. The next window will ask you if you want to protect the media with a password. This is a must so we can prevent accidental imaging.
This is also where you can set the expiration for this bootable media. We typically just set it up for a year to expire. The next window is just filling up your settings for the boot image and the distribution point. Then you just have to wait for the system to finish creating the bootable media.
Once the bootable media is created, the next step is to insert the USB drive onto the computer that you want to image. Then you can press the appropriate function buttons to change the boot order to select booting from USB. You can check online for the correct button for the make and model of the computer you are imaging.
You can also change the boot order in the BIOS itself. Once you're in the BIOS settings, look for the boot order option and then change the first boot order to USB. Then you can exit the BIOS and make sure to save the changes.
The computer is going to reboot, and it should load the image, and you can start with the installation process now.
Okay, so thank you so much for watching today's video. If you have any comments regarding today's video that I might have missed covering, please leave it in the comment section down below. If you have any questions, please leave a comment down below, and we will try our best to answer all of them.
Thank you so much for watching, and I hope to see you guys in the next one.
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