Best practice for a build environment?

[Radboy]

You may do two things to accomplish a new build box environment.

Idea 1
1. Create the base environment - O/S and Apps needed
2. Use Symantec Ghost and create a ghost image - This way you can have a clean environment everytime

Idea 2

Use VMware like the previous gentleman was talking about. Just one correction to his statement. You have the ability to produce a Snapshot of your environment and the ability to recreate that environment at a later time if so desired (Non-Persistant) or you can update the snapshot as you go (Undoable) or you can use it as a regular persistant volume much like you do with a non-VM machine. This software gives many options and is pretty fast in doing so compared to Ghost.