I’m just starting work on the deployment of a lab full of iMacs and Mac Minis, and I’m going to document the process in a blog post. Not this blog post — this is just the appetizer :).

The plan is to use a modular system image, a method of deployment that is new in OS X Server 10.5, and offers numerous improvements over the old way of system deployment, cloned system images. Some advantages of modular images are:

1. The image is not model-specific, so it can be deployed on different models without issues.
2. The image is clean, in that it has never been booted before it’s deployed. Booting a system changes it; the modular image will be booted for the first time on the system to which it is deployed.
3. Apple updates are applied directly to the image. During install, your customizations occur automatically after the OS has been installed, so the Apple updates never interfere with your customizations.
4. Dramatic reduction in the time it takes to create and maintain images over time. Once you have a base image, you can just make a copy of it and apply your updates and changes to it, as opposed to creating a new image from scratch every time you need to update or customize an image.

This will actually be the first time I’ll have used modular images in a real-life deployment, so it should be interesting to see how it goes. Stay tuned!