Windows® Migrations and PC Refreshes

Migrations are required at various times, sometimes for a single machine and sometimes for a large number. It may be the result of a ticket logged with the service desk and a pc refresh is the most effective way to address the issue. It may be a company-wide move  to the latest Microsoft operating system.

There are countless considerations to keep in mind when rolling out a new operating system including that you:

• Ensure no hardware or software compatibility issues exist
• Employ a solution that lets you easily upgrade systems with minimal impact to your users, their desktop experience and the network
• Plan and budget resource usage, including increased staff time and associated costs

The same applies to the day-to-day pc  refresh activities of your help desk.  Having the right tool to minimize the disruption already caused by a ticket being logged and a system being refreshed is critical to minimizing the impact to productivity and subsequent tickets logged with the help desk.

Time to Move to the latest Windows OS

The majority of PCs installed in your workplace are probably old and in need of an upgrade - now.  A lot of organizations skipped Vista waiting for the latest and greatest operating system Microsoft had to offer, and many have found it in Windows 7. Moving to Windows 7 as part of an OS upgrade or even part of an overall PC refresh initiative allows organizations to take advantage of the advancements made in Windows 7 such as improved software and hardware compatibility and reduced system resource requirements.

Getting an accurate picture of what you have across your network can be as important, if not more so, than the migration itself.  And being able to quickly and easily inventory your assets and understand your migration readiness with robust reporting is something that must be considered.

With FootPrints Inventory Manager, you can easily assess what hardware and software assets you currently own and decide what needs to be upgraded, replaced or retired prior to the migration itself.  Gain a better understanding of your entire asset portfolio and eliminate wasted expenses by ensuring that installed software is properly licensed, up-to-date and compliant with company and industry standards before moving to Windows 7. And now you can keep your stakeholders informed during the entire project with FootPrints Inventory Manager’s graphical reports that provide a visual representation of the migration progress.

Numara FootPrints Inventory Manager accurately detects assets accessing your network and provides details for each asset including operating system versions and applications for each PC in your environment.

Making the Move

Manually upgrading each computer to Windows 7 would be a huge time and resource drain, especially if your business has multiple locations, types of systems and shifts or schedules. With FootPrints Deployment Manager, you can continue to use the image formats that you are familiar with and easily install Windows 7 operating systems including formatting and partitioning of hard drives.  Furthermore, whether the computers are on or off, you can ensure a complete installation with Wake-on-LAN capabilities.

Now that You’ve Moved …

One of the most important success criteria to evaluate post-migration is user impact.  Moving to the new Operating System is enough of a learning curve for many end users, so it is essential to ensure that their upgraded desktop has the same layout and accessibility to data and resources as it did prior  to the migration.

With FootPrints Migration Manager, you can automatically extract and inject user personalities—including application settings, wallpaper, drive mappings, bookmarks, favorites, etc. This step in the process is critical to eliminating the “where can I find <<insert item>>?” post-migration calls and will result in reduced costs as well as higher satisfaction for both users and IT.  FootPrints Migration Manager dramatically reduces the cost and labor of your Windows 7 migration project. Instead of individually updating each machine, you can now automate the migration process for hundreds, even thousands of machines all from a centralized location. And, large scale migrations can easily be completed in a few days versus the 2-4 weeks generally required to configure a migration with Microsoft’s User State Migration Tool (USMT) and with no command-line coding needed.

Follow the checklist to know the status of your user personality migration and when the injection is completed successfully.

The Numara FootPrints solutions family

FootPrints Inventory Manager, FootPrints Deployment Manager and FootPrints Migration Manager are part of our family of FootPrints products and solutions for IT Lifecycle and IT Service Management. Built from the ground-up as a modular yet integrated system, FootPrints products can be purchased separately or as part of our broader FootPrints solutions including Service Management, Service Desk, Lifecycle Management, Desktop Management and Security & Compliance.