Deployment Planning Template explained

this article will help you develop a complete deployment solution, and you will learn many deployment tools and techniques, but having this technical knowledge does not necessarily mean that you have a good plan. To help you create a deployment plan, a Deployment Planning Template has been created to accompany this article. This document is provided as a digital file so you can print it out on plain paper, which is an easier format to work with when planning.

As you learn new deployment techniques reading through this article, you’re encouraged to document the techniques that you think will work best in your deployment plan. The Deployment Planning Template is formatted to make it easy for you to plan each deployment step. Each section is organized in table format to help you apply specific techniques and solutions to your particular deployment tasks. Then in article 8, “Complete Deployment Solutions,” you will learn how to finalize your deployment plan using the Deployment Planning Template as a foundation.

Deployment Concepts

You certainly could start by identifying specific technical solutions, and then create a plan around those solutions. However, this bottom-up approach yields inflexible solutions because you’ve already chosen the answers before you’ve considered the problem as a whole. Instead, this article takes a top-down approach, first identifying the primary elements that make up a complete deployment solution. You’ll find, however, that no matter the size or scope, all deployment solutions consist of one or more of the following main concepts: hardware logistics, usage management, item deployment, system deployment, postimaging tasks, and system maintenance.

Hardware Logistics

How are you going to physically deliver the computers to your users or get them onto their desks or into the lab? And delivery is just one part of the physical deployment. You must also consider your deployment’s load on your infrastructure and its physical security and consider the replacement or disposal of your existing system. The concept of hardware logistics is covered later in this article.

Usage Management

Once your systems have been deployed, how will you maintain a secure and consistent user environment? Your organization’s management is likely responsible for creating policy that defines users’ access to computing resources. The enforcement of these usage policies must be implemented as part of your deployment plan. Usage management is also covered later in this article in the “Planning Hardware Logistics” section.

Item Deployment

In some instances, deploying individual files, folders, or software items, such as an application or a new driver, to your computers may be all you need to do. How will you efficiently deploy these items to all your computers? There are a variety of techniques that you can consider for accomplishing this task.

System Deployment

How will you ensure that all your computers have the appropriate software and uniform configurations? This concept is what most administrators think of when deployment is mentioned. After all, maintaining a uniform computing environment across all your systems is the best way to ensure that things run smoothly. As you can imagine, deploying entire systems is more complex than deploying single items, and there are many approaches you can take to achieving a uniform environment. This topic receives the most attention in this article. System deployment is covered in article 4, “Deploying Entire Systems,” and in article 5, “Using NetBoot for Deployment.”

Postimaging Tasks

What individual configuration needs to occur on each Mac after they have all received identical systems? Although maintaining system uniformity is a primary deployment goal, some settings must be unique to each computer for example, each computer must have a unique network configuration. The challenge is to deploy these unique settings on multiple Macs as efficiently as possible.

System Maintenance

How will you efficiently make administrative changes and monitor activity on all your computers? How will you ensure that licensed software is properly accounted for on all your computers? How will you keep the software on all your computers up-to-date?