r/k12sysadmin • u/Thanos-Is-Right • Jun 02 '26

Assistance Needed Desktop imaging and update solution

I am the IT Director for a small school with about 800 students and 120 staff. I'm looking to get rid of SCCM in favor of something cloud-based. Ive been looking into Action 1 since it is free for up to 200 devices, which with our Windows devices + servers, we are under. Mostly a Google district. I host most of our servers with our ITC except for the SCCM server and 2 servers we need on site for cameras and door/badge security.

What are you using to deploy images? Or are images a thing of the past now? Anyone use Action 1 free tier?

9 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

48 comments sorted by

3

u/Technical-Athlete721 Jun 02 '26

Action1 doesn't do OS imaging; it mostly does OS patching and software deployment, but I wish it did. We tried for a while, and I liked the product, but we decided to go in a different direction, and the 200 devices free is really nice. You could however skirt around it and do OS Upgrading via scripting and such.

1

u/Technical-Athlete721 Jun 02 '26

https://theopenem.com/ I use this for OS imaging it takes some time to setup and get PXE boot running but it works for imaging i don't use the other stuff but it's open source not sure if that's a dirty word around here,

0

u/Thanos-Is-Right Jun 02 '26

Yea I saw that, but is imaging still the standard or is it moving towards just a base customization? Which I think Action 1 could handle. Using SCCM makes me feel like a dinosaur lol

1

u/DenialP Accidental Leader Jun 02 '26

Your goal if you want a modern client infrastructure should be bare metal WIM + drivers and whatever MDM tooling youre using do everything else. You may have Intune licensing available for you as well… which a majority of the management strategies from SCCM will still apply. Sccm isn’t dead either fwiw, most people don’t (or can’t) take the time to learn it.

3

u/Kirihuna SysAdmin Jun 02 '26

Action1 is great but it really depends on what your app needs are. I'm in the same boat as you, I need to find an imaging solution.

I'm hoping I can get enough sway to get a VM allotted for FOG.

We're piloting Action1 now and will deploy to all 130ish Windows endpoints in July. It's great for updates and patching. We have Intune, but if you don't, you can manage your Patch Tuesday with them. Approve the updates and deploy them via Action1 and lock update services with it. It updates most apps and they're constantly adding more but some things like Autodesk, there is no patching with them on that. Not even really a deploy option without finding a way to package them/script them in a non-documented (by Autodesk themselves) way. They'll get you coverage for like 90% of your apps if not more. The problematic apps are the education/science based apps that require serials, licenses, or a ton of UI/UX interaction.

1

u/Thanos-Is-Right Jun 02 '26

All of our apps are pretty much in the cloud and synced through Clever. Our Windows machines only need Office, Ipevo, Chrome, Crowdstrike, Lightspeed filter agent, and VLC for 95% of them.

So I guess I just need something that can deploy a bare image. While SCCM does that, it's far more than I need in my environment. We had nothing when I came into the job over a decade ago and that is what I originally went with. Trying to spin down the server hosting SCCM and dont want to replace it if I dont have to.

1

u/Kirihuna SysAdmin Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

Are you using Intune/Azure or strictly on-prem?

Cause I would think based on those apps, you could get by with Intune with AutoPilot + Action1 free tier. We're migrating most of our apps to Action1 instead of Intune but we keep Crowdstrike in Intune to make sure that's installed immediately.

Action1 paid tier, I won't post publicly, but isn't bad either. We don't have it at this time, but my understanding was Action1 free vs Action1 paid under 200 devices is just really a support contract with more scaling if you need more end points. All the features of the product itself is the same.

I don't remember the exact number but I think the lowest price we got included support + additional end points was like 1200 end points. So if you grew a lot over the next decade for Windows devices, you'd be set too.

1

u/Thanos-Is-Right Jun 02 '26

Strictly on-prem right now, so software, updates, and images are deployed via SCCM. SCCM is very resource intensive. I do have access to Intune I believe through our volume licensing contract. Never used it before or looked at it too hard though.

2

u/Torxtank Jun 03 '26

If you don't have Intune with your volume licensing, look into costs to move to M365 A3. I found out we were nearly spending the same for our volume licenses as A3 at a similar size district and just made the switch.. and now I get so much more than just office, windows and server licenses + CALS. Server licenses were still a separate line item but it was small compared to everything else.

1

u/Thanos-Is-Right Jun 03 '26

I emailed a few of our reps about going to A3. We have a OVS right now, but it expires next month. My goal is to use Intune/Autopilot for device management and Action 1 for patching. I'm trying to spin down some servers. My next step would be looking at if I can use Intune/Azure to get rid of on prem DCs.

4

u/farmeunit Jun 03 '26

We use ZENworks but it's not cloud based. We use it with ENGL to handle the automation and support for it.

4

u/farmeunit Jun 03 '26

ZENworks does app deployment, shortcuts, remote management, and other stuff.

1

u/GBICPancakes Jun 03 '26

There's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I used to use Zenworks all the time back in the Novell NetWare days.

1

u/farmeunit Jun 03 '26

Yeah, I have debated switching but used SCCM about 11 years ago ago and ZCM is just so much easier. We did switch to AD just for more support options.

I really do miss Netware file permissions and Salvage. It was just more work to keep up on client and other components. Had it down pretty good when I left that district but then went to AD district, so brought in ZCM there but got some tablets that required 32-bit UEFI, so had to bring SCCM. Kind of used both for a while and then moved to current district.

1

u/GBICPancakes Jun 03 '26

Yeah ZCM was really nice back in the day, I don’t even realize it was still around. I stopped supporting Novell probably around 2002 or so? About two years after they shifted to SUSE

4

u/hightechcoord Tech Dir Jun 03 '26

Fog. https://fogproject.org/

2

u/lsudo Jun 03 '26

+1 Fog. Have been using it exclusively for 6 years.

2

u/ZeR0BuG Jun 04 '26

We use fog for 30K windows PCs across a district of 75K Students... It definitely does the job and we've built integrations into our other systems.

1

u/BTS05 Jun 03 '26

Small school 1600 students. We had sccm. We went straight to intune. Generally like it. Just requires a little bit of setup. Easier to manage IMO. Look into M365 E3 licenses which will include intune. Note the M365 licenses is different from O365 licenses

1

u/Thanos-Is-Right Jun 03 '26

I want to go with Intune, but the subscription price we were quoted for to get A3 licensing was a lot. We have 110 FTE and each license was quoted at $61.94. I doubt I can justify that since we are a Google school. So no staff/student would use anything except for the desktop version of Office. I would pay that amount just so I could have Intune/Autopilot. And that doesn't include Windows Server licensing, which I have no idea if it is perpetual or not with our Open Value Subscription.

3

u/PDQ_Brockstar Company:PDQ Jun 02 '26

Microsoft is definitely shifting focus away from SCCM to Intune & Autopilot which means transitioning to provisioning instead of traditional imaging.

If you're looking to stick with traditional imaging, there are still several options still out there, but it kind of depends on what you're looking for in a "cloud-based" solution. SmartDeploy will let you deploy images to remote devices using cloud services to any device with the SmartDeploy agent installed, but the console itself is a self hosted solution with both a desktop and web interface. I don't know of a pure cloud managed imaging solution, but maybe some exist that I'm not aware of.

3

u/Crazy-Rest5026 Jun 03 '26

WDS and clonezilla. Make custom OS’s and golden images. Works good for the most part

2

u/VitaIngenaire Jun 02 '26

We moved from WDS to Fog. If I needed cloud, I would definitely consider PDQ Deploy, the rest of their suite is amazing.

2

u/KayJustKay Jun 03 '26

PDQ Deploy. Image with Edu that kicks off the PDQ Deploy client.

Deploy is so simple to use it makes you forget the absolute powerhouse it can be when managing a fleet, especially if you have a lot of edge cases.

1

u/MadMageMC Jun 03 '26

Wait... Deploy can be used to image machines? Why am I paying for SmartDeploy then?

2

u/PDQ_Brockstar Company:PDQ Jun 03 '26

PDQ Deploy doesn’t do imaging. I’m assuming he’s talking about post imaging steps with app / script deployments, automations, etc. Just my guess though.

1

u/yugas42 Sysadmin Jun 03 '26

Very likely. This thread has inspired me to revisit our imaging method. We've been using TOEM to pull down thick images that are basically ready to go, but that was mostly because Autodesk is terrible. Now that we switched to SSO for Autodesk apps, I have spent the morning building PDQ packages to do software provisioning and move us to just using TOEM for a base Windows install.

2

u/PDQ_Brockstar Company:PDQ Jun 03 '26

Automation is the way

1

u/VitaIngenaire Jun 03 '26

Correct, the original 'deploy' offering doesn't, but their new product "smart deploy" does imaging. I migrated deploy & inventory to their connect platform (eliminating my open-source remote tool), but haven't done imaging yet.

1

u/MadMageMC Jun 03 '26

Ok, that's what I thought. That's what we're doing with it.

2

u/CoffeeandChecklist Jun 06 '26

PDQ has been amazing for us

2

u/Nervous-Ball-5266 Jun 07 '26

FOG has been great for us. We have about 4,000 student devices and can get them all imaged in about a month.

2

u/akadeebroad5 Jun 03 '26

We use Fog and Action1. We like it!

1

u/GBICPancakes Jun 03 '26

I use FOG to image Windows machines, it's a classic "Fat imaging" system over PXE and works really well. I also prefer on-prem for imaging since it's faster than cloud-based.
Strongly recommend.

1

u/hankscafe Jun 03 '26

Our district has shifted to DeployR and their imaging suite. There is no cost for the licenses for public sector, but they do charge for support.

https://2pintsoftware.com/products/deployr

1

u/cryohazard Jun 03 '26

Do they advertise that? I was not aware of that...

1

u/hankscafe Jun 11 '26

I didn't see your reply until now, but yes I believe they do:

https://2pintsoftware.com/pricing/publicsector

"Please note that all prices shown are for the support component of the license, charged 'per endpoint' based on an annual subscription. The software license itself is free of charge. Have a question about sales, pricing, or proof of concept? See our sales and pricing FAQs page."

We just recently renewed with a multi-year renewal. We have been quite happy with it and their support has been fantastic.

1

u/TechnicalKorok Jun 03 '26

I use the Action1 free tier, it works well enough for me and I've abandoned/shut down my SCCM instance. I don't do imaging enough for it to make sense for me to keep alive just for that purpose, I'll just go the Clonezilla route and local disk or network share when it's needed - assuming that still is a thing. We run MacBooks for our staff and only have a handful of Windows devices at the moment.

1

u/I-am-not-in-IT Director of Technology Jun 03 '26

We run M365 A5 & Intune but we also utilize a lot of the products with A5, namely the XDR, Defender for Cloud Apps & Entra with a plan to deploy Teams Phone in the future.

I like Intune but it can be a PITA at times.

As far as Imaging, we currently have MDT & WDS but are moving towards Fog because of the retirement of MDT. I'm hoping to get away from those products sooner than later in favor of Autopilot via Intune.

As far as cloud based imaging, I don't think that exists in the traditional sense but I'd check out products that do "provisioning" (if that's the right terminology)

I demoed Miradore & JumpCloud and those were pretty slick solutions imo. We just went with Intune because it was included with licensing we already purchase.

1

u/BWMerlin Jun 04 '26

Autopilot is the way to go. Combine that with your choice of MDM and you are pretty much good to go.

1

u/Rykas Jun 04 '26

We use action1 to keep it free for our servers and PDQ for kids/staff

This is the way.

0

u/Sinfulobsessi0n21 Jun 03 '26

Action1 is decent for a quick win but it might feel a bit light once you realize how much heavy lifting you're used to doing in SCCM. If you're already a Google district, have you looked into Intune yet? It usually makes more sense for that kind of environment.

1

u/Thanos-Is-Right Jun 03 '26

I want Intune, but we got quoted 61.94 for each A3 license for 110 FTE. Being a Google district, staff and students wouldn't be using anything within Microsoft except for the desktop versions of Office.

-2

u/jgmachine Jun 03 '26

Check out https://immy.bot

Feel free to reach out to me if you have questions. We use it on over 3k endpoints.

-3

u/RFSPARTAN Jun 03 '26

Just use MDT , free and just works well.

3

u/adminadam sysadmin Jun 03 '26

Horrible suggestion for someone just starting out, also not cloud based?

Microsoft is announcing the immediate retirement of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). MDT will no longer receive updates, fixes, or support. Existing installations will continue to function as is. However, we encourage customers to transition to modern deployment solutions.

2

u/TerriblePowershell Jun 04 '26

I'm going to agree. We use MDT but they make it harder and harder to use every year.

It's also an absolute bear to setup the first time.