Updating XPE

[Carlos]

We have hundreds of XPE installations which will grow to thousands
very soon. They can all be considered to be almost identical to each
other, pretty much clones.
My question is what is the best solution for upgrading all those XPEs.
We also have a similar amount of Windows 2003 installs and a few less
of XP pro. We would like to be able to upgrade all of them with either
the same solution or one solution per OS.

So far from researching I think SMS may be the best solution but I
wanted to find out from people here what they thought about it.
Current we have a WSUS server for the windows 2003 updates but it
seems like doing XPE updates through that may not be the best route,
and only limited to security updates!
The device update stuff seems to be a good option but that wont work
for XP pro or windows 2003 as far as I can tell.

So I am leaning towards SMS however I haven't found much information
about it mixing with XPE, and whether it can handle all types of XPE
updates, will I be able to install new software? just security
updates, etc?

Any suggestions are welcome! I am looking for any information anyone
who has experience with this can provide.

Thank you,

--Carlos

 

[Sean Liming \(eMVP\)]

What kind of upgrades? OS only? Or custom applications and drivers?

SMS does work with XPe, but hte questions is do you images currently support
it?

FYI - Keep an eye out for an XPe upgrade tool that can help upgrade XPE
images.

Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental
Toolkit

 

[Carlos]

What kind of upgrades? OS only? Or custom applications and drivers?

SMS does work with XPe, but hte questions is do you images currently support
it?

FYI - Keep an eye out for an XPe upgrade tool that can help upgrade XPE
images.

Regards,

Sean Limingwww.sjjmicro.com/www.seanliming.com
XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental
Toolkit

We would like to be able to upgrade as much stuff as possible, from
security updates, to OS features to custom programs, but of course
security updates are the main priority.

If our current XPE systems dont support SMS its not a huge deal since
we just replace them easily but we will only want to replace them once
and soon.

I am pretty sure we don't want WSUS, and SMS seems great cause we can
use it for win2k3 and xp pro as well. Using DUA is something I'm still
researching but don't know if it would be the perfect solution! what
are the main differences between SMS and DUA? which is easier to use?
which will scale better?

--Carlos

 

[Sean Liming \(eMVP\)]

DUA is the lowest common denominator solution for upgrades. It doesn't
require a full back end server to run it. DUA is a small service that
executes a very basic command set. You set the day of the week and the time
it performs the update. You would have to create a DUA script for each
update that you want to deploy. Some people just add DUA to the build just
to have it available along side a main deployment solution. More informaton
can be found here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms912885.aspx



SMS is a full blow asset management, update, etc. solution. You can create
custom update packages of your software and OS updates.



WSUS - is only for OS updates.



Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental
Toolkit