You'll have read by now I'm sure about Emory University's Operating System Deployment disaster.
For those who haven't, during TechEd 2014, the university's IT department prepared and deployed Windows 7 upgrades to the campus computers. Rod Trent provides a good summary of the unfortunate mishap at Windows IT Pro.
"If you've worked with ConfigMgr at all, you know that there are checks-and-balances that can be employed to ensure that only specifically targeted systems will receive an OS upgrade. In Emory University's case, the check-and-balance method failed and instead of delivering the upgrade to applicable computers, delivered Windows 7 to ALL computers including laptops, desktops, and even servers.
"I'll stop for a second to let you take that in.
"Yes, even servers. By the time it was realized what exactly had happened, the Windows 7 sequence had re-partitioned, reformatted, and installed Windows 7."
Over at myITforum I've started a series on how to minimize the risk of an operating system deployment disaster. You can read part one here.
System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager does a great job of deploying Windows operating systems. We at 1E have been able to hit some pretty high success rates in helping our customers with their Windows migrations. However, if not done correctly, OSD can be very dangerous and can cripple your environment in a short amount of time, as Emory found to their cost.
There are several checks and balances that can be put into place in order to prevent something like this from happening and in this post I will focus on Maintenance Windows and limiting Collections. If you are still stuck in the habit of setting up deployments to All Systems, then the best thing you can do is break that bad habit now! Otherwise, be sure to keep a copy of your resume updated in case something really bad happens.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences on the issue. Leave me a comment either in the space below, or over on my post at myITforum.