Alternitive to an image?

[Catsrules]

My work is changing from a novell network to an Active Directory network. They are saying they instead of useing images they are going to do Something called provisioning.
I dont know what provisioning is but is sounds cool, they are saying they can just setup what you want and it installed it on all on the computers even with different hardware. I have around 6 computers at home that I would like to do this on. Does anyone have a "how to" guide and a list of things I will need to do this?
Thanks

 

[GhislainG]

Are you using Windows Server 2003 or 2008 R2 at home? Did you configure AD? This video will help you understand what provisioning can be used for: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80iNwNT614M

Provisioning might be expensive for a home network.

 

[Catsrules]

I am running server 2008. No I am not useing AD it is just being used as a web/ data/ FTP server.

That is realy cool what they can do with that!! So how does that work? Wouldn't that be realy realy slow, if it has to copy all of that information, on every boot? And with 50 of those computers trying to access the server doesn't help.

Well I don't think I would want to do it how they have it. I want to be able to use the same image or what ever they call it on diferent types of hardware because I don't any computers that are the same.

So do I need in terms of software, or is it all build it to Server 2008?

 

[GhislainG]

Why don't you ask your IT department what they're using? They're not doing it for speed; they're doing it because it saves them a lot of configuration time. Booting from a server image has been available for like 20 years; that's why mosts PCs can boot from the network. However newer solutions are far more flexible and powerful. You can now decide if applications will be virtualized, etc.

 

[Catsrules]

Best answer selected by catsrules.