Cloning vs Autoinstalling

Cloning is a bit archaic (also known as "ghosting"), IMO.  If you have
more than a very small number of machines, you're probably better off
just doing a vendor
install, and then running a script (with case statements on hostname and
such) to tailor the config of the machine.

This algorithmic approach has the strong advantages of being much easier
to retarget at new releases of an OS, and allows for variations based on
hostname, DNS domain, subnet, owner of the machine, and so on.

You can think of it as being a lot like what the best admins of years
ago did: Keep a log book of -every- change made to a machine.  But
because the description is algorithmic, rather than in English, you can
"replay" the changes again at a later date, and you don't end up having
to decide how to record a change that is made to a non-0, non-100
percentage of your machines - you just case as needed in your script.