OEM Deployment Packs for ConfigMgr

Like I said before, I don't like to use this blog to simply mirror product announcements (although can I just say - the Windows 7 beta rocks!).  I talk a lot to customers about Operating System Deployment in System Center Configuration Manager.  With the ability to deploy server operating systems with it as well a lot of customers are using the ConfigMgr OSD technology to provide a single provisioning location for their Windows clients and servers.  It's a great way to do it, as the technologies are essentially the same.  If you can deploy Windows Vista, you can deploy Windows Server 2008.  If you can deploy Windows XP, you can deploy Windows Server 2003.  However some things a slightly different for servers as they have some unique hardware requirements that you don't have to do on workstations (e.g. configuring the hardware RAID etc etc).  This is where our partners at Dell, HP & IBM are extending the ConfigMgr platform and providing tools that plug in to the OSD framework and let you configure their server hardware as part of a task sequence.

Dell released their tool late last month: Dell Deployment Pack for ConfigMgr

IBM released their tool at the end of last year: IBM Deployment Pack for ConfigMgr

Now all we need is the HP pack and we've got the whole set!