USMT Use in SCCM Demystified

Lets take this tool today for Dissection . Many of you who have worked on SCCM and Specially Operating System Deployment Feature of SCCM must be aware of this tool .  To make it very simple from SCCM Perspective ” USMT is used to Capture User State  ” .

Let us have a look at the below diagram :

Note :  USMT is used when we want to Migrate from one Operating System to Other ( Just like Many of you might be set to do or Doing SCCM XP to Windows 7 Migration ) .

Now Before we may use USMT in SCCM , we need to create the USMT Package in SCCM.

There is One more important thing which is important in USMT and that is Hard Linking  . 

Many of you wonder what exactly is Hardlinking .  Well !! Hardlinking is a used when we want to Migrate a Machine from One OS ( Say XP ) to Windows 7 , but the Underlying Hardware remains the same . Otherwise we may use SMP ( State Migration Point ) . Lets explain this in more detail , When we use USMT to Capture user settings we get an Option to Store the settings either locally or on SMP . If , we choose Locally it is called as Hard Linking . SMP is used in those cases where we want to replace a machine i.e We want to Migrate OS from machine a ( Lets say XP ) to Windows 7 on Machine B .

Below Figures will make this more clear :

In the Above Figure we have choosen  to save the user settings Locally , This is called Hard Linking .