OSD HP Image Assistant Revisited – an Overview

I’m revisiting using HP Image Assistant or HPIA as we call it, during OSD in a Task Sequence. I’ve previous posted a method here: Deploying HP Driver Updates with Image Assistant and ConfigMgr Task Sequences – GARYTOWN ConfigMgr Blog

Recommended Reading: HPIA’s User Guide, get to know your command line options

Task Sequence Exports: HPIA OSD Task Sequence Series (33 downloads )

GitHub Content: garytown/hardware/HP/HPIA-BlogSeries-2024

Fine Print: These are personal blog posts to help give you ideas of what can be done. These are not official docs, if you run into problems, it’s best effort to assist you, as it’s not my job, and everything on garytown.com and any other project I’m assisting is my own time, and I make no money from it. I also like run-on sentences.

Just a quick a note, during OSD, I recommend following this process:

• Apply the latest driver pack for the platform during WinPE (DISM Apply Drivers)
  • Driver Packs (64-bit) | HP Client Management Solutions
  • HPCMSL: Get-SoftpaqList -Platform ABCD -OS Win11 -OSVer 21H2 -Category driverPack
• Optional: Install the WPF apps located in the driver pack
  • HP Developers Portal | New Combined Driver and UWP-HSA Packs
• Run HPIA once in the full OS to update devices and install WPF helper apps.

I’m going to talk about several senarios of how this can be used, then create a post for each. Business requirements vary greatly depending on the company, so a one size fits all doesn’t work. I’m going to go over several options and you can pick and choose what would probably work best for you.

• Offline Mode – Pulling content from Local Repository (Think WSUS)
  • Requires that you regularly sync HP content to local repo
  • Great for managing exact content you want deployed on your HP devices
  • You have 100% control in this method, allows for Dev / Prod processes
    • Hosting Repo on NAS / File Servers
      • Most simple, works great if you have very fast networks and everyone has access to a central server
    • Hosting Repo in ConfigMgr Packages
      • Best if highly distributed and already have good P2P and content management setup in ConfigMgr
• Online Mode – Pulling content from HP’s internet servers (Think WUfB)
  • Simple, you just invoke HPIA, and it pulls the content from HP’s Servers
  • Controlled, you create HPIA Reference files that you reference in the command line to control the versions of the content, allowing for Dev / Prod processes
  • Great for when you have a lot of work from home users that pull directly from internet (split tunnel or no VPN)
  • Potentially bad if you’re in an office runnng on sevearl machines and saturating a network

Now, not all of those options pertain to OSD, as you probably aren’t running OSD on people over VPN or at their home. But it’s good to think about.

In this series, I’ll cover these options:

• Online – Grabs the latest directly from HP – Blog Posted 24.4.10
• Online – Uses Reference file to control which content is installed on device. 24.4.10
• Offline – Repo on NAS: 1 large repo which works for all Platforms for all OS Builds 24.4.11
• Offline – Repo in ConfigMgr Packages: 1 Repo per Platform, based on OS Builds 24.4.12
  • Simple: Direct Mapping – 1 Step per Platform
  • Advanced: Dynamic Mapping – Variable matches and dynamic download of content.

To create offline repos, it requires HP Client Management Script Library (HPCMSL), which you’ll then use to build your repo. I’ll provide some scripts along the way to help make life a bit easier. As with most things, newer models are easier to support. Make sure you’re always using the latest!!

Recommended Reading:

• Creating HPIA Reference Files
  • HP Image Assistant – Locking in Update Versions with Reference Files – GARYTOWN ConfigMgr Blog
  • HP Developers Portal | Customize HPIA Reference FIles

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