Rapid Desktop Replacement
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I support around a 100 desktops and don't bother with imaging or backups. I don't worry about backups because I just don't find HP PCs fail on a regularly basis, so its simply not worth the effort of worrying about them. And the majority of users only use standard applications (Office basically), so I can setup a new HP PC, including installing Office and uninstalling HP bloatware, in about 20 minutes.
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Holy cow. I drive to work, and there are 18 posts!
So, I am switching to the side of 100% agreeing with you in ALL business cases. Regardless of what you run, desktop re-imaging isn't necessarily the best way to go. I am just thinking of it as a convenience. I'm working at 12. I got lunch, and my laptop gets stolen. I pick up a new laptop on the way back from Best Buy and I am back up and running as I was at 12 pretty quickly.
But ... I store all my personal stuff on this laptop too, which makes me think me reticence here is machines only on a personal level. I guess I am really thinking of a personal level. Like your elderly uncle who has all their pictures and music on their machines, but aren't backing up.
Is it really just a matter of ... hey if it is important to them they should know better? Or ... hey if it is really that important, it's more than just a personal machine and should be considered as such?
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@scottalanmiller said:
The answer here should be to move those critical data-storing apps elsewhere. To a server, to a hosted site... whatever. A high quality VPS starts at $5/mo. If the system isn't worth $5, it's not critical in the least.
Recommendation, for future storage ... in my brain?
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@Dashrender said:
You are allowed to create images of each machine to be restored on the same hardware that the image came from.
If it works, which the home user cannot legally check.
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What about bookmarks, things like that?
Again, I've taken this down to just the most basic of users. Your grandmother. The crazy guy who lives in the next apartments who knows you work with computers.
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Recommend something like Crashplan... not instantaneous like you are expecting but the easiest way to do it.
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@Dashrender said:
@Jason said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
The two CALs are free. Doesn't change the math, just saying.
I don't understand, how are the two CALs free? Do you mean free as in unassigned?
Each server licences comes with two CALs for administrative purposes.
Server software licensed using CALs permits up to 2 users or devices to access the server software for the purposes of administration without CALs. However, if your administrators also use the software for anything other than administration (for example, they check their email), CALs will be required for them as well.
Actually, no - your quote specifically said permits up to 2 users or devices to access the server software for the purposes of administration without CALs
So I'm back to not seeing any free CALs
It's still a CAL because it is a client and a license to access.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I support around a 100 desktops and don't bother with imaging or backups. I don't worry about backups because I just don't find HP PCs fail on a regularly basis, so its simply not worth the effort of worrying about them. And the majority of users only use standard applications (Office basically), so I can setup a new HP PC, including installing Office and uninstalling HP bloatware, in about 20 minutes.
You don't do imaging for restores, or you don't have a standard deployment image?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I support around a 100 desktops and don't bother with imaging or backups. I don't worry about backups because I just don't find HP PCs fail on a regularly basis, so its simply not worth the effort of worrying about them. And the majority of users only use standard applications (Office basically), so I can setup a new HP PC, including installing Office and uninstalling HP bloatware, in about 20 minutes.
huh, I'd never deploy a machine without wiping it first, but hey, that's me.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@Jason said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
The two CALs are free. Doesn't change the math, just saying.
I don't understand, how are the two CALs free? Do you mean free as in unassigned?
Each server licences comes with two CALs for administrative purposes.
Server software licensed using CALs permits up to 2 users or devices to access the server software for the purposes of administration without CALs. However, if your administrators also use the software for anything other than administration (for example, they check their email), CALs will be required for them as well.
Actually, no - your quote specifically said permits up to 2 users or devices to access the server software for the purposes of administration without CALs
So I'm back to not seeing any free CALs
It's still a CAL because it is a client and a license to access.
The quoted part says without CAL. how can it be without a CAL and still be a CAL?
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@BRRABill said:
@Dashrender said:
You are allowed to create images of each machine to be restored on the same hardware that the image came from.
If it works, which the home user cannot legally check.
You can legally image your own machine for restoring to your own (same) computer with an OEM license.
I own a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro with an OEM license on it. I can legally create an image on it, and if the need arises I can restore that image onto the Yoga whenever I want.
It's only an issue if you want to restore your OEM image onto a different machine.
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@BRRABill said:
I am just thinking of it as a convenience. I'm working at 12. I got lunch, and my laptop gets stolen. I pick up a new laptop on the way back from Best Buy and I am back up and running as I was at 12 pretty quickly.
But ... I store all my personal stuff on this laptop too, which makes me think me reticence here is machines only on a personal level. I guess I am really thinking of a personal level. Like your elderly uncle who has all their pictures and music on their machines, but aren't backing up.
Is it really just a matter of ... hey if it is important to them they should know better? Or ... hey if it is really that important, it's more than just a personal machine and should be considered as such?
This only sounds reasonable because you are both ignoring certain aspects and have a cascade of problems leading to it:
- The use case where the laptop gets stolen highlights the importance of not going down this road. You are looking at a use case where having the data on the device exposed you and ignoring that you need to protect that data and only thinking about recovery.
- In no case where you protect that data does imaging do anything useful. So you have to expose one risk to justify this weird use case.
- You are using a ridiculously unlikely scenario (laptop theft) to attempt to justify bizarre processes. You are not looking at overall risk factors but cherry picking one in an attempt to justify a bad practice.
- No one should store all of their data on their laptop. Doesn't matter who they are. Fix the bad practices and your use case vanishes completely.
- Even in cases where you do store your data, exposed on your laptop, you are still not protecting the data well and making a lot of work where none should exist.
- Your use case requires you to replace the device with one that is very similar unnecessarily.
You are layering on assumptions and bad decisions in an attempt to find a special scenario where this makes sense. And even with all of that, I can't agree that it makes sense even in a contrived scenario. Imaging an end user device simply doesn't make sense. Given any specific example, no matter how contrived, I'm pretty confident that we can show a better process to follow.
There is a reason why Linux desktops and Mac desktops are never imaged even though you are free to do so, unlike with Windows. Not because of licensing, but because imaging end user physical devices isn't useful.
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@BRRABill said:
Is it really just a matter of ... hey if it is important to them they should know better?
Pretty much
.
.Or ... hey if it is really that important, it's more than just a personal machine and should be considered as such?
If it's a business machine, then the owner should care about these things. Needless to say, many don't think about it. They are spending most if not all of their time worrying about their core business, but they are failing their businesses because they are not also worrying about how their business will survive if that one machine that holds everything that matters to them suddenly dies.
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@BRRABill said:
@Dashrender said:
You are allowed to create images of each machine to be restored on the same hardware that the image came from.
If it works, which the home user cannot legally check.
How would a home user check anyway? The only use case for this is where data is all resident on a single device and never shared and no other devices exist. So in any case where we struggle to justify the process, the user could not check anyway. In any use case where they could check, the idea of imaging as a backup is demonstrably quite bad.
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@coliver said:
Recommend something like Crashplan... not instantaneous like you are expecting but the easiest way to do it.
That's actually what I use all the time. $5. Awesome.
But I've also had to restore the large amounts of data. Not awesome.
Especially with apps and settings involved. -
@Dashrender said:
You can legally image your own machine for restoring to your own (same) computer with an OEM license.
Yes but you can't legally spin it up to test that it's actually working. I mean, you can access files, but not the image itself.
All you can do is pray, and drink beer, and be happy.
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@BRRABill said:
What about bookmarks, things like that?
Again, I've taken this down to just the most basic of users. Your grandmother. The crazy guy who lives in the next apartments who knows you work with computers.
The more you take it to basic home users, the farther you get from imaging as a process. Imaging requires technical know how, always on connections, target devices on the network, etc.
Bookmarks are handled by any normal backup tool AND by all major browsers. No need for any special process there.
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@coliver said:
Recommend something like Crashplan... not instantaneous like you are expecting but the easiest way to do it.
Crashplan, Backblaze... lots of good options. Very cheap. Good for those low end cases where users do not own a full infrastructure.
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@BRRABill said:
@coliver said:
Recommend something like Crashplan... not instantaneous like you are expecting but the easiest way to do it.
That's actually what I use all the time. $5. Awesome.
But I've also had to restore the large amounts of data. Not awesome.
Especially with apps and settings involved.How much does the average user have though? We are talking home users who place stuff on their drive and hope for the best. Something is better then nothing in this case.
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@BRRABill said:
@Dashrender said:
You can legally image your own machine for restoring to your own (same) computer with an OEM license.
Yes but you can't legally spin it up to test that it's actually working. I mean, you can access files, but not the image itself.
All you can do is pray, and drink beer, and be happy.
Although accessing the files is all that you would need or generally want.
