How are you guys testing onboarding deployments?

General
1

Hey all!

We are a medium sized MSP and relatively new to using ImmyBot to assist with new PC deployments. Initially I was the only engineer tasked to build out deployment logic for our clients and have been testing these on a spare laptop I have at my office. However as we grow, we are needing to add more engineers tasked to build out and maintain our various client deployments. Because of this we are trying to find a better way to test these deployments using a central server with HyperV installed, but I haven’t quite figured out how to mount the PPKG file to the freshly created windows VM within HyperV. This lead me to here and I’m curious, how do you various companies utilizing this fine platform test your deployments before they go live? Do you use spare hardware, do you use virtual machines, or do you just wing it and hope for the best?

Thanks!

Dylan Bradley

2

So I personally use a spare laptop that I have on my desk but I am looking to just start doing it on VMs. Immybot did recommend sandbox mode though which when I messed with it before did seem like it would be a good idea. Here is their doc

Let me know though if the sandbox ends up working for you if you decide to test it! I am also starting to look for better ways to do this.

3

Yea we saw that option too, and while that might help in testing very lightweight deployment processes, it won’t allow us to fully test our client’s onboarding processes including joining them to AAD/AD, pushing out custom deployment scripts for line of business apps they might use, etc. For now we have a server spun up to be a HyperV host and have had success in building a Windows 11 VM and booting it to the “Select a Region Screen”. Once here if you burn your PPKG file to an ISO, mount the ISO to the VM, click on United States (or any other country in the list) and hit your Windows key five times it will kick off the OOBE experience and install the ImmyBot PPKG file.

For now we are finding it easier to deal with this, test it, delete the test VM, and build a new one. But if anyone else has a better test enviorment configuration I’m all ears!