"Gold" Application deployment/singular update?

[ilmickeyli]

Hi Guys

I am in charge of administering the servers/applications for my company's new ERP software we are migrating to.. It's going to take 2 years and several million dollars. That said I am controlling over a dozen different environments that are published through Citrix.. it's a lot of work/stuff.

My question to you guys is there a way I can just make one "gold" application that I can maintain and base all of the others off it? This way if a developer needs another environment they can just grab the base and run a script against it to change certain info and run with it.

Or if I need to install an upgrade, say going from version 6.7.4 to version 6.8, I would just upgrade the golden and they can backup their DB, redeploy the "gold" and drop their DB in and be set. DO NOTE I CANT JUST PUBLISH DESKTOPS LIKE VDI, I WISH I COULD. I don't think that would solve it.

Basically I'm overwhelmed and my boss knows its too much for me and my dept is too busy with other projects so I'm being asked to try to come up with a solution that they would pay for.. Otherwise they will hire someone else.

Any help would be HUGELY appreciated.. Move this to virtualization/whatever other forum makes sense if necessary.

Thanks!