FHC PC Mgmt

Is anyone aware of any standards for FHC PC Mgmt? We have 20+ PC's in our FHC and are unfortunately managing the updates of OS and FHC programs manually.

We leverage the standard version of deep freeze to restore a pristine version of the OS/desktop each day, but don't have the enterprise version that allows central management. Was curious what other FHC's may be using that have large numbers of PC's to manage.

Thanks,
Paul

I don't use Deep Freeze myself, as I believe that locking down the PCs does just as good. As such, I have the PCs set for auto-update.

I used Clonezilla <http://clonezilla.org> in a couple FHCs. I installed it on a portable hard drive and used it to take an image of each machine (since there were a number of different configurations). It allows the FHC staff to refresh the machine any time they need to do so either to fix a windows error or eliminate patron installed software, etc. Any time you make changes, you just create a new image. It takes about 10 minutes to create an image or restore an image on the machines in the FHC.

I don't know how different TEM is from LANDesk, but I wouldn't feel comfortable installing closed images. Each computer has a name, and TEM must somehow maintain an inventory of FHC computers. If you use cloned images, how can TEM tell them apart?

drepouille wrote:I don't know how different TEM is from LANDesk, but I wouldn't feel comfortable installing closed images. Each computer has a name, and TEM must somehow maintain an inventory of FHC computers. If you use cloned images, how can TEM tell them apart?

Follow this guide: Preparing computers in family history centers with Tivoli to be imaged or cloned.

Since we maintain unique images for each machine, I don't think we have the issues that you'd have with a single image for multiple machines.

I have the same types of questions as pwilson. I am a new FHC Director, with an IT background. I'd like to understand the following:
- Is Deep Freeze recommended by FamilySearch?
- I think it is, and if so, how should we be managing updates to the OS, Java, Adobe, and so on?
- Does FamilySearch push out images using Tivoli? Does Deep Freeze interfere with that?
- In other words, do we manage updates, or does FamilySearch (the Church)?

We installed Deep Freeze I believe at the recommendation of SLC, but now as I mention we are left with an unwieldy update strategy for keeping the PC's up to date. My understanding is that the Church only updates administrative software (antivirus, TEM, etc) any OS level (Windows 7) and applications is left to the FHC, which in our case takes multiple hours each month.

bcpalmer60 wrote:Does FamilySearch push out images using Tivoli?

No.