Departmental Boot Image

A departmental boot image is a

boot image A boot image is a type of disk image (a computer file containing the complete contents and structure of a storage medium). When it is transferred onto a boot device it allows the associated hardware to boot. The ''boot image'' usually includes ...

for any computer that has been enhanced by adding some applications and passwords specific to a task or group or department in an organization. This has many of the advantages of a

thin client In computer networking, a thin client is a simple (low-performance) computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. They are sometimes known as ''network computers'', or in ...

strategy, but can be done on any

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

base as long as the

boot device In computing, booting is the process of starting a computer as initiated via hardware such as a button or by a software command. After it is switched on, a computer's central processing unit (CPU) has no software in its main memory, so some ...

is large enough to accommodate the boot and applications together. A typical departmental

Windows XP boot image Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

is usually so large that it requires a

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

to store, and may be too large for

network boot Network booting, shortened netboot, is the process of booting a computer from a network rather than a local drive. This method of booting can be used by routers, diskless workstations and centrally managed computers (thin clients) such as publi ...

ing. Accordingly, it is usually installed on a fixed or removable

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magne ...

kept inside the machine, rather than installed over a network or from a ROM. There are some

boot image control {{Unreferenced, date=September 2007 A boot image control strategy is a common way to reduce total cost of ownership in organizations with large numbers of similar computers being used by users with common needs, e.g. a large corporation or governmen ...

complexity and

total cost of operations Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a financial estimate intended to help buyers and owners determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or service. It is a management accounting concept that can be used in full cost accounting or even eco ...

advantages to using a departmental boot image instead of a common boot image for the entire organization, or a thin client: *all the capabilities of a full

are available, not just those of a

*applications with inflexible

software license A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both sour ...

s need not be paid for the entire organization, but can be paid only for the departments that actually use them and have them installed on their machines *applications that interact badly can be segmented so that an accounting program and an engineering program do not "

clobber Clobber is an abstract strategy game invented in 2001 by combinatorial game theory, combinatorial game theorists Michael H. Albert, J.P. Grossman and Richard Nowakowski. It has subsequently been studied by Elwyn Berlekamp and Erik Demaine among ...

each other's libraries" or otherwise interfere as they would if both sets of applications were installed in one

*overall size of each boot image can be controlled to fit within network or

removable disk Expandable storage is a form of computer storage that is designed to be inserted and removed from a system. Some forms of removable media, such as optical discs, require a reader to be installed in the computer, while others, such as USB flash dri ...

limits Disadvantages include the complexity of creating and managing several large boot images, and determining when a department needs to upgrade its applications. If each user is allowed to do this on their own, then, the discipline soon degrades and the shop will be no easier to manage than one that consists of one-off computers with their own quirks, frequently requiring re-imaging and whose issues are not really diagnosable nor comparable to each other. Some experts believe that any departmental boot image regime degrades rather quickly to this state without extraordinary discipline and controls, and advocate

s to ensure such control. It is however increasingly possible to restrict users from installing "their own" applications on a standard boot image, and to automatically re-install when a variant boot image is detected. While this would be draconian in a large organization with one boot image it is often quite acceptable when the boot image is maintained at a departmental level and users can request that it be upgraded with a minimum of bureaucracy and waiting. {{DEFAULTSORT:Departmental Boot Image Booting Disk images