To JNick,
I have been dealing with some portion, if not all of the problem, which you have presented here. We were having a problem where the more units that we deploed during the provivioning process (the more computers that are in the task to deploy the OS and provision the machine(s)) the slower the image was laid down. We found that with one PC it took 12 minutes to lay down the 5 GB imge with Imagew v.2 and with 4 machines it took nearly 50 minutes. After a close examination we discovered that the port the target was plugged into was reporting a 10 MB FD connection. This was supported because no matter how many PCs were connected to the host and downloading that host nver showed more than 8 to 10 MB of data being sent out over its network connection.
The problem (cause):
When systems PXE boot the network speed is set within their bios and this is usually 10 MB. Once the payload comes down and the computer boots to PE the system tries to load a NIC driver. Now there is a default NIC driver in the LANDesk PE build and that was what is connecting to our Catalyst switchs at 10 MB. The problem is the default NIC driver(s) in your PE.
Our Solution:
We called our Lenovo support team and they gave us a list of drive3rs to try. They worked. When those drivers are added (and you have to load the correct one for EVERY NIC that you have in your fleet) then the catalyst reports 100 MB FD and the source preferred server now shows the image coming down at 85 - 93 percent of 100 MB. Now the time it takes to run ImageW v.2 did not speed up (there are things going on there that cannot be hurried), but now more than one system does not cripple the deployment. This allows us to simultaneously roll 8 systems per task and realistically provision some 200 machines per 8 hour period. I suppose if we hag a GB link we could really rock n roll, but 200 is nice.