What's new for OSD in version 12.1

New OSD architecture (multi-site)

As a best practice, only one OSD manager should exist. For legacy installations, your old OSD Managers are still there and usable, but you should check to see if it isn't possible to move to the new architecture. See Considerations before upgrading OSD to version 12.1 .
Image repositories were added, which eliminate the need for multiple OSD managers in an environment.
The OSD Proxies are replaced by Network Boot Listeners .
Windows XP/2003 devices can no longer be OSD Managers.
Linux and Mac OS X devices can now be and image repository, a network boot listener or both.
Note:

The MAC OS X device must be a real computer, not a virtual device if it is to be a network boot listener.
The external TFTP server, necessary for versions previous to 12.1, is no longer used. It is now integrated into the OSD functionality.

USB device support

A self-sufficient USB device can be created, containing both the WinPE and the data to be deployed, either a Windows setup or a WIM image (including sysprep). UEFI and legacy boot are both supported depending on the project.

UEFI support

Operating system deployment can now also be executed on UEFI-only devices.

Drivers by model support

An additional method of managing the drivers that are assigned to devices has been added. The Drivers by Model method. It is possible to place all needed drivers for a particular model of a device in a single folder. The system will automatically deploy all the drivers to the device, increasing the success of OSD.

Driver storage optimization

The storage mechanism for drivers was improved to ensure that drivers are only stored once and are linked to instead of being duplicated. If no objects refer to a stored driver any more, it is deleted as are its physical files.

Differential file transfers for OS images

If an image has a small update, only that small portion is transferred across the network to devices, instead of the whole OS image.