hello. if i have created a custom image with all my apps and custom settings in mdt and uploaded to sccm 2012 r2. is there a way for me to give the vendor a copy of this image so that they can pre-load our machines before delivery. ideally i would want to unbox and switch on, on my side. i doubt they would have sccm on their side so some disk duplexing software will probably be used to clone the drive i give them.

this would be similar to what the oem guys do i suppose. any pointer to get this done?

I would start by asking the vendor what the options are. The most ideal situation would be using ConfigMgr as it would allow you to sent a prestaged media to the vendor. For more information see: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/hh499044.aspx

thanks for the link. let me have a look there and contact the vendor. will get back to you soon.

i read through the section on how to create the pre-stage media:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/79465d90-4831-4872-96c2-2062d80f5583#BKMK_CreatePrestagedMedia

is my understanding correct if i say the following: once i create the media it will contain my custom wim and a boot image. this is then given to the vendor to copy onto the hdd's of the new machines? i take it this is why i need to find out if they are using sccm on their side?

Yes, your understanding is correct. One thing I wasn't really clear about initially, the vendor doesn't need to use ConfigMgr, but needs to understand it. The prestaged media can be applied without further need of ConfigMgr at the vendors' site. For an example see: http://blogs.technet.com/b/system_center_configuration_manager_operating_system_deployment_support_blog/archive/2014/04/02/how-to-apply-task-sequence-prestaged-media-on-multi-partitioned-disks-for-bios-or-uefi-pcs-in-system-center-configuration-manager.aspx

that's exactly what i was looking for. let me have a look there and test it out. thanks.