virtualbox.org

I work in a computer repair shop and I suggested to my boss that we start using clone imaging software to speed up Windows installations on customers' PCs.

My suggestion was to install the OS's in a VM and then capture the partition with CloneZilla. He told me he "looked into that once and found that the VM software requires me to pay each time I use it". I'm assuming he meant VMware, as this is the software we commonly use for other things.

If we were to use VirtualBox to install Windows operating systems so that we could clone them, would we be required to pay any fees to do this? I want to make sure I'm on firm ground here. Thanks!

It would be some-kind of solution, but besides the license issue your better of with a single master installation, make a folder containing every driver you can get for all your models and sysprep it, sysprep does a better job between hardware changes which you are going to have a problem with sooner or later when using virtual images.

make a folder containing every driver you can get for all your models

I think you've misunderstood my question... A folder containing every driver for every device ever made for every Windows operating system in existence?

I work in a computer repair shop ..... Windows installations on customers' PCs.

The drivers we're not worried about, we download those from the manufacturers' websites as needed. It would be an insane undertaking to collect every driver in existence.

sysprep it

So.. create an answer file and then still do a manual installation of Windows...?
We can't incorporate drivers ahead of time because we have no way of knowing what those drivers are.. they're customers' PCs.. brought in by random customers.. And it would defeat the goal of automation, which is what I'm striving for with the imaging, to create a custom sysprep for each customer.

My question was about licensing requirements for creating Windows images in a VM. I don't think this will cause problems later, it's done all the time.. If I have misunderstood the answer please correct me, and thanks for taking the time to respond. Maybe I wasn't clear enough in explaining my intent

I want to capture the installation partition of every version of Windows we regularly install on customers' PCs.

XP Home x86, XP Pro 86, XP Pro 64, Vista Home Premium x86, Vista Home Premium x64, etc. It's easier (and a lot faster) to do the installs in a VM.

Then I will set up a server and network boot the customers' PCs to image them.

If there's an easier way to go about this I would love to hear it Admittedly I'm not too savvy on network deployment. And I'd love to know about the licensing requirements involved with using VirtualBox like this.

Depending on the version that you are thinking about using the License has changed a lot with the release of version 4.0.0
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions
The License FAQ
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ

Anyway from the sounds of it VirtualBox should not be that big of a concern. It's Microsoft you are going to need to work with on all of this imaging stuff. They are really touchy about things like this.

Thanks for the links Perryg. I did do a search in the forums for licensing but I couldn't find the links you posted, they help a lot.

Anyway from the sounds of it VirtualBox should not be that big of a concern. It's Microsoft you are going to need to work with on all of this imaging stuff. They are really touchy about things like this.

My understanding is it's ok for IT staff to do imaging as long as each individual machine has its own unique product key, so I will capture the images before activation. Thanks again for the info!

Chocobits wrote:My understanding is it's ok for IT staff to do imaging as long as each individual machine has its own unique product key, so I will capture the images before activation. Thanks again for the info!

Yes - and Microsoft even provide you with a free tool - Sysprep - to help you do it, and the web page describing this tool is quite explicit about its expected use. As you say, provided you have a unique product key for each PC, or a volume license of course, then MS have no grounds for complaint.

In answer to your question, I'm not sure why you need VBox. I'd have thought an Acronis image of a Sysprep'ed PC was more appropriate. That's how I recently cloned my work development PC to duplicate at home (with the knowledge of everyone concerned I hasten to add - I needed a convenient way to work from home) - I installed a replacement product key on first boot then I was up and running in no time flat. It helps when the hardware is identical though...

In answer to your question, I'm not sure why you need VBox. I'd have thought an Acronis image of a Sysprep'ed PC was more appropriate. That's how I recently cloned my work development PC to duplicate at home (with the knowledge of everyone concerned I hasten to add - I needed a convenient way to work from home) - I installed a replacement product key on first boot then I was up and running in no time flat. It helps when the hardware is identical though...

As far as I know, Sysprep clones an entire disk? I didn't see an option for customizing it to only capture a partition but I'm not too familiar with Sysprep. It seems unwieldy though. And the hardware will not be identical.. by any means.. so installing Windows on the most generic machine possible is ideal. Can't get much more generic than a VM right? Also, we have 15-20 different versions of Windows to image. Every popular version of XP, Vista and 7 in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors. So the fastest installation on the machine to be captured as possible is desired - it takes 20 mins on average to install a Windows operating system in a VM using an .iso of the installation media. It's easy to run a cloning environment like CloneZilla inside the VM to capture the partition image and copy it to the server.

As for deployment, is Acronis free, and does it allow multiple machines to be imaged with DIFFERENT versions of Windows simultaneously? Because a CloneZilla Ubuntu server is free and allows multiple different operating systems to be deployed at the same time.

I'm all for hearing advice on how to do what I'm wanting to do better.. but for what I want to do this suggestion pretty much sucks.

Chocobits wrote:As far as I know, Sysprep clones an entire disk? I didn't see an option for customizing it to only capture a partition but I'm not too familiar with Sysprep. It seems unwieldy though. And the hardware will not be identical.

Sysprep doesn't clone or image anything: it just sets up boot flags so that the image on a disk runs a mini-setup on next boot, including prompting for a new product key. It is intended that you image the disk at this point, using the additional tool of your choice, and distribute the image. From your earlier comments I thought you already knew this. Sysprep (or rather the mini setup which runs) allows for some hardware differences I believe, but that isn't something I needed to learn about.

Acronis is a well regarded disk imaging and backup tool. It is not free, so by all means use your preferred free alternative instead - though personally I would never rely on unsupported software for mission critical work (by unsupported I mean I'm not entitled to any comeback if the software doesn't work). For a business the cost of Acronis wouldn't even be a factor in the decision.

And I don't know what you are saying later on about it being cumbersome: all of the methods you have outlined so far involve imaging the disk, Acronis at least has the benefit of being user friendly - and designed for that purpose (among others). And the images are compressed (not just compacted), so your server could hold many more.

btw. All of your images will be whole disk images - imaging a single partition is pointless as the image would not be bootable.

Chocobits wrote: As far as I know, Sysprep clones an entire disk? I didn't see an option for customizing it to only capture a partition but I'm not too familiar with Sysprep.

Its obvious, so learn what sysprep is and does, including search paths for drivers which can be on an external drive you keep uptodate seperately. With sysprep you can maintain one image for 99% of all hardware. It is 'the' method manufactorers use and can be fully automated with tools like mysysprep.

Doing this with VBox can only work if you run them as VM's with VBox on top and again a base OS which will give users limits as no direct hardware access is possible, VDI's restored in a v2p process will have another load of problems on their own. VDI's kept via p2v conversions will, again, have problems with the VM hardware which will give even more problems when a p2v image manually converted for VM use is going back with v2p.

To keep it simple buy a cheap NAS solution and keep images on that, no vbox needed.