Using DeployStudio For Imaging and Restoring OS X Setups for Testing

Update: DeployStudio is very popular in schools. I found some very detailed documents on how one administrator setup DeployStudio in a K-12 school environment. The name of the article is Desktop Maintenance - DeployStudio QuickStart Documents.

For years we've used NetRestore for imaging and restoring our OS X test computers. Mike Bombich did a great job in writing and supporting this useful product, but it has now reached its end of life. Consequently, we set out to find a replacement and have settled on DeployStudio.

This feature set won us over:

• Deploy & image Macs & PCs
• Advanced computers reconfiguration (Mac only)
• Full automation support
• Realtime deployment monitoring
• Freeware!

The way we employ it is on an external drive with OS X and DeployStudio server software installed. This server also acts as the image repository. When we need to reimage, we plug the external drive into the target machine and restart onto that OS. Then we use the DeployStudio Runtime to reimage the local partitions as desired.

It has the ability to run shell scripts after the restore is complete. This could be used to make images more convenient with less user interaction required. For example, you could cause the script to automatically install a commonly used testing application after being reimaged.

While their documentation on their homepage isn't the best, their forums are active and the creators seems to respond fairly quickly to questions. They also have a wiki. It's very new so not much in it, but presumably will have more information as time passes.