Deploying and Managing State-of-the-Art Workstation Labs Like a Boss!

Abstract

Our PACE Computer-Aided Design (CAD) / Manufacturing (CAM) / Engineering (CAE) Lab is one of our flagship computer labs at Lehigh University. The Lab is uniquely supported by both the Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics (MEM) Department and the IT organization. It is also unique in that we make available pools of virtual workstations to supplement the 60 physical high-end Windows workstations that are critical to our teaching and research missions. In addition to the PACE Lab, we also have to deploy and support 25 other lab and research environments, each having their own unique software and requirements. The entire university has been using Symantec Ghost for image management for nearly 15 years, but we needed a more flexible and automated solution to create, deploy, and manage Windows Operating Systems. You will learn why we decided to focus our efforts on the completely free Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Lite Touch solution, and how it has increased the efficiency of our deployments. We are currently expanding these techniques and realizing their time-saving benefits even in our datacenter and support of IT infrastructure. We have also been successful in deploying the Windows 10 Technical Preview in a test lab and are keenly awaiting the final release of the updated deployment tools that will officially support the new Microsoft Operating System. You will walk away with real-world best-practice workflows that you can immediately implement in your own environment to realize some of the benefits that we have already seen.