Time to deploy

[Kevin79]

I am currently using SCCM with MDT integration to deploy my custom Windows 7 image. Typically, a deployment takes about 3 hours to complete. During the deployment, Office, Adobe Reader, Skype for Business and SAP are installed. Is this a normal amount of time? I want to make sure I have it all set up correctly for the best performance.

[Rocket Man]

Depends on your network infrastructure, how may deployments at a time, PCs\laptops hardware, and how you are deploying i:e access content directly or download content first. 3 hours does seem a little excessive against the software you have listed in ether deployment configurations.

[Kevin79]

Usually it is one deployment at a time. It doesn't seem to matter if it is a laptop or desktop either. How do I tell how the content is accessed? How can I change it?

[Peter33]

Do you deploy updates in your task sequence? This would explain the duration. Updating Windows 7 is no fun at all. I'm curious to see how the plans for cumulative updates will play out, which were just announced by MS. At the moment i am creating monthly new images with MDT including all updates. Also, office and SAP are part of the image already, which helps a lot. The Windows 7 image weighs almost 13GB but deploys in an hour.

You can speed it up a little by activating the option to apply the operating system image directly from the distribution point share, which will cost you additional space on the servers

[Kevin79]

Updates are deployed but the image is fairly up to date (maybe a couple months old).

[Peter33]

Well, you should check the smsts.log to see how long the update step, or any other step takes to finish. Only way to find out what consumes the most time in your TS.

Also, it doesn't matter how many updates are already installed in your Image. The Client has to process the policies for all assigned updates, which may take some time for Windws 7 and Office together.

[Kevin79]

Ok, I'll look through that file. Thanks.

[Rocket Man]

 

How do I tell how the content is accessed? How can I change it?

 

This is set on the deployment of a sequence as below:

 

 

Take note to avail of this option you have to configure all packages associated with the task sequence to copy to distribution point share on the Data Access tab of the package as seen below:

 

 

Remember as Peter has stated by doing this you will consume more disk space on the DPs by making it available for clients to directly access.

If you are limited to space then you could just configure your image.wim file this way and continue to use the task sequence deployment settings as download first. You can set this in the task sequence editor on the apply OS Task and set it to access directly as below: