The 5.1 release of the KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (or SDA) includes a major new enhancement, namely the ability to stream images during capture and deployment.

Traditionally, when capturing a WIM image there was a need for extra disk space to create a WIM file and add all files from partition(s) being captured. Once the WIM was built, it would then be transferred up to the SDA as one file, then removed from the computer's hard drive. This required enough free disk space, on the computer, to hold the WIM file temporarily.

Likewise on deployments, the WIM would be transferred down to the computer's hard drive and then "unpacked". Once all the files were unpacked onto the hard drive, the WIM would be deleted from the computer. This also required enough free disk space, on the computer, to hold the WIM file temporarily.

This created challenges when capturing images from or deploying images to computers with smaller hard drives.

Using the new Direct Streaming enhancement in 5.1, the Copy WIM step is eliminated…meaning you no longer need that "extra" free space. Even better, this new feature works with your existing KBEs and previously captured images! All you have to do is upgrade to 5.1, and check a few boxes.