Migration : There's got to be an easier way

[SRed]

Hey guys, I'm posting this here from my post on TechNet. I'm getting frustrated because I feel that I must be doing this wrong somehow.

 

Basically my issue is that I feel that I must be doing unnecessary work somewhere here, and want to make it all easier on me. We're about to begin migrating user's from an old pc to a new one, though the new one may also have been present in SCCM. The new PC will be renamed along the process.

 

 

Here is my current procedure:

• In SCCM, import new computer record, and create computer association with Source PC
  
• Place Source PC in USMT Capture collection in SCCM
  
• Manually PXE boot new PC for OSD
  
• When Source PC finishes USMT Capture, manually place Destination PC in USMT Restore collection
  

 

I left out hours of crying in frustration as I try to try down any duplicate records a machine may have, as my organization is *VERY* big on redeploying hardware. Normally I have to track down any old computer accounts in AD and delete them, then go to SCCM and search many times for any old SCCM records. This can take a LONG time.

How are you guys simplifying this process? I've thought of skipping the first step, and only creating the computer association after the new PC is imaged. I would handle the OSD process by creating a W7 Laptop and Desktop OSD optional advertisement and suppressing all notifications for it. Implementing this method to prompt in task sequence for computer name, and hoping SCCM is smart enough to focus only on the current record, ignoring any previous deployments this PC may have had.

So, what do you think? Is this dumb? Is there an easier way to do this? Why do I ask so many questions?

[Harvey]

We just wipe and load, our user's documents are redirected to a share so back up process should be very minimal like IE favorities and such, but htat will change as we migrate to Windows 7 and take advantage of the new redirection policies.

 

I support about 7000 systems in a few states but our company has more and each region has their own IT mgmt and methods.

 

This works for me because I find that computer association would be too cumbersome for the techs to use and they always complain about time consuming processes and wouldn't be able to troubleshoot it. It would be another thing for them to come me with questions about. I'm the only SCCM admin and the techs aren't really able to pick up even the concept of how a Task sequence is advertised to a computer so we just stick to a manual process for backing up data.

 

All reimaged systems have new records created. The same name system w/ the old records will be purged by SCCM in a few days, if the system is reimaged with boot media it will prompt for PC name. Systems that reimaged using RAP will not prompt.