Windows 7 WDS - Deploying to more than a hundred computers at the same time.

[seffaulmino]

I have made a windows 7 image on my WinServer 2008. And I am wondering how much longer it would take to deploy it to 100 computers compared to deploying it to 10 computers only. Given that I use multicasting, that is.

I have search lots of pages about multicasting on google and the best I got is "Multicasting saves a lot of bandwidth compared to Unicasting which will send different data to every computer which then uses a lot more bandwidth."

It's kinda vague. I have deployed Win7 to eleven computers using multicasting and it took around 80 minutes to finish them all and the average network usage on task manager during deployment was around 75-85% (of 100Mbps)

So, my question is if I deploy it to a hundred computers at multicast, would it take more than an hour longer?

 

[WinOutreach2]

In an ideal environment, a deployment to 100 systems with multicast would take the same time as 10 systems or 1000. Unfortunately it is never that simple. There are a lot of additional variables, such as how the network is configured and how the network configuration handles multicast. Also, the multicast component is only the broadcast of the bits, the image itself. Network dependent tasks like domain join or post-deployment application install still utilize direct connectivity. In my experience, for an 80 minute deployment to 10 machines, you should be looking at an extra 10 to 30 minutes to increase to 100.

If possible, I would recommend connecting the WDS server via gigabit to the network. This will allow much of the transport communication to occur between the switch and the WDS server without interfering with the data stream. The same would apply for inter-switch communication, though how the switches handle multicast will be more of a factor than these backbone links. Of course, gigabit the whole way through would be even more ideal.

Details on WDS multicast can be found under the WDS Multicast Server article on TechNet. You may also want to take a look at the deployment content on the Windows 7 Deploy page from the Springboard Series on TechNet. If you have not yet taken a look at the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT), it is an amazing technology which can increase the efficiency of your deployment process significantly.