I'm looking for an affordable way to deploy and refresh roughly 100 Windows PCs at our main office, with possible expansion to remote offices. Since MDT is deprecated, I'd like to find a supported alternative that can install the latest Windows build, add standard drivers, join the domain, disable the built-in Administrator account, and install our standard software.
USB and PXE deployment are both options, though PXE may be more useful for remote locations. I'm accustomed to bare-metal deployments and still think a clean reinstall is the best way to refresh machines, but I'm open to provisioning or scripted approaches that avoid fully imaging every device.
We are Microsoft 365 customers, but corporate has not granted our local team access to Intune, Entra, or the other tenant administration tools, despite us being responsible for managing the devices. That makes Autopilot and Intune unavailable for now. The solution needs to be free or reasonably inexpensive.
5 Answers
DeployR is probably the closest low-cost replacement for the old MDT workflow. It provides a more familiar task-sequence-style deployment process and is being used by some teams specifically as an MDT replacement. I’d test the community edition against your driver and application requirements before committing to it.
If you want the simplest and cheapest approach, continuing to maintain the existing MDT/WDS setup may be the least risky option. Deprecated doesn’t necessarily mean it stops working immediately, and a local deployment share or a replicated share at remote offices can keep deployment practical. The downside is that you’re accepting an unsupported platform and will eventually need to migrate.
For a more polished commercial option, SmartDeploy can cover bare-metal deployment, drivers, applications, and remote-office workflows, but it won’t meet a strict free requirement. Clonezilla or FOG are cheaper alternatives for cloning and PXE, although they generally require more scripting and operational work to achieve the full workflow. If corporate eventually grants access, Autopilot and Intune would be the better long-term direction, with imaging reserved mostly for recovery and unusual rebuilds.
A Windows answer file can handle most of this without needing a full deployment platform. Use an autounattend.xml on the installation media, inject any required storage or network drivers, and run a setup-completion script to install drivers, join the domain, disable the built-in Administrator account, and install standard applications. This works well with either USB media or a PXE process. You’ll need to update the answer file and media periodically as Windows releases change.
OSDCloud is worth evaluating. It uses PowerShell to deploy a current Windows image and can be combined with PXE, a network boot menu, or removable media. It’s a good fit when you want a relatively clean Windows installation rather than maintaining a large golden image, and it can be extended with scripts for drivers, domain joining, and software installation.
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