When I arrived at Kountry Wood Products, the computer deployment process was manual, time-consuming, and inconsistent. Each new computer or reimaged machine required a technician to sit with it for approximately three days – installing Windows, applying updates, installing applications one by one, configuring settings, joining the domain, and testing everything. With a rapidly growing company of over 500 employees across three locations, this approach simply didn’t scale. We were constantly behind on deployments, and each inconsistencies were frequent even with a thorough checklist.
I made the decision to implement FOG (Free Open-source Ghost), an open-source imaging solution that would allow us to create standardized computer images and deploy them over the network..
I set up a proof-of-concept FOG server in our main location, created a standardized golden image that included all our essential applications and configurations, and demonstrated the deployment process. Instead of three days of hands-on work per machine, we could now image a computer in about three hours – most of which was unattended network transfer time. The technician would boot the computer to the network, select the appropriate image from the FOG menu, and walk away. When they came back, the computer was fully configured and ready for the domain user to login.
The time this saved us was transformative and reduced out deployment time by about 85%. Additionally, now ever new computer was now configured identically, eliminating the variations and forgotten steps that had plagued our manual process. When we needed to update the base configuration – adding a new application or changing a setting – we could update the master image once, or add something to our group policy that was targeted towards our machines with the new image.
The implementation of FOG blew my colleagues and my manager away. The FOG implementation became critical in freeing up our resources so we could have more time to help support the upcoming ERP project that was around the corner.