During the last month, we are receiving multiple requests to allow the installation of an Operating System using a USB Thumb Drive over the Cloud.
So I asked myself why not using Symantec Deployment Solution to accomplish this task?
Short answer: Currently this is not implemented in the product.
Long answer: Symantec / Broadcom doesn´t support installing the OS using USB Thumb Drive through the CEM Gateway. Technically this might be possible if you modify the Preboot Environment, but it would be nice if we could use this feature „out-of-the-box“. The Feature Request should allow a user to boot through WinPE using a USB Thumb Drive and then a Support Engineer should be able to assign jobs / tasks on the client.
I modified a very common CEM Diagram to illustrate what the Feature Request should cause.
Use case 1: This solution would allow the IT stuff to better support their customers and also allows greater flexibility even when the user is working from home and needs to reinstall the OS.
Think about users working remotely in their homeoffice requiring to reinstall the OS.
In Covid times this is a very common scenario.
Use case 2: If you think about being a Managed Service Provider and a customer is hit by ransomware and needs to reinstall all computers without setting up a Deployment Infrastructure at the customer site to reinstall their Computers / Servers.
Furthermore, it would be really amazing if a Bootable WinPE USB Thumb Drive could be created using Bootdiskcreator even when the user is only connected through the CEM Gateway – something like an additional website like the CEM Website or a website like the software portal where the User could download the WinPE ISO File.
Endpoint Management 