Boot image control

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 government agency. This is considered part of enterprise application integration in larger shops that use that term since applications are part of the boot image, and modify the boot image, in most desktop OS.

Windows Vista includes tools for boot image control, displacing third party tools. Mac OS has always had more flexible handling of boot drives, simplifying control and reducing the need to move boot images around between drives. Increasingly, boot image control is a network operating system function.

Very often a large computer vendor is required to explain in a bid in response to an RFP how they intend to simplify the purchaser's boot image control problems and the attendant service costs:

The total cost of ownership correlates strongly to the total number of different images, not the total number of computers, so this is a major cost concern. Three basic strategies are commonly advised:

Organizations that do not closely track, control and set common standards for, acquisition of new computer hardware, typically can only practice a thin client strategy.

Which strategy will reduce total cost of operations the most depends on several factors:

While the departmental boot image strategy seems to be the most flexible, the complexity of creating and managing several large boot images, and determining when a department needs to upgrade its applications, can easily outweigh these. Especially if users object and try to subvert the discipline of waiting for a regular boot turn to upgrade all machines at once. If each user is allowed to do this on their own, then, the discipline soon degrades into effectively a bunch of home computer whose issues are not really diagnosable nor comparable to each other. In which situation thin clients may become the only practical answer:

Many organizations use thin clients for applications which require high security, involve unreliable users or repurpose older machines for continued use. This much simplifies boot image control by facilitating centralized management of computers, and has many advantages:

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