Using remote installation services for windows to streamline installations in the UTPB computer science research lab

Abstract

The Computer Science Research Lab at The University of Texas of the Permian Basin (UTPB) is operated by three part-time student assistants with minimal faculty supervision. This lab supports seven Windows and Sun Solaris servers and approximately thirty workstations within one subnet. Installing updates and new software on each workstation became very time consuming, so research was done on the Remote Installation Services (RIS) included with Windows 2003 Server add-on components. At first, it was difficult to get the RIS component to work within the domain environment because the inaccuracies of provided documentation caused many unanticipated problems. There were also problems with various hardware configurations on the different workstations, such as hyper-threaded processors on limited workstations. After a year of diligent effort, we have filled in the blanks in the provided documentation and have successfully implemented the RIS component. If a workstation has problems, we just reinstall the entire operating system, complete with customized programs, security settings, and operating system updates from a list provided by the server and little manual intervention is needed to start this process. Unattended installation scripts will provide answers to the server and the client in regards to where files will be stored and what settings the workstation will have when the process has been completed. The paper will discuss the procedure for setting up the RIS component, including the needed modifications/additions to the available RIS documentation.