Last week, yet another Image Management tool was produced by Microsoft to build Nano Server images.

There is a decent size list of current image management tools:

• Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT)
• System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)
• Windows Imaging and Configuration Designer (ICD)
• Windows Deployment Services (WDS)
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)
• Nano Server Image Builder (NSIB)

For organizations that manage their Windows Images, both workstation and server, this creates a lot of sprawl and non-standardized processes. For some procedures, you have to use multiple tools to get your required result.

This also causes issues acquiring talent as System Administrators may have experience with one tool and not another.

Ideally this tool would accomplish the following:

• Cross-platform (Physicals & Virtuals, On-Prem & Azure, etc)
• Manage .wim/.esd, vhd/vhdx, .ppkg, and possibly other file types
• Built on PowerShell

Microsoft, please standardize on a single tool to manage all images of Windows.