Cupramax

I have a large batch of new PC's that need loading with a standard desktop image, anyone have any thoughts on the software thats out there i..e. Ghost, Drive Image etc etc.

Thanks

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Ghost is by far the leader for this imo.

Foot_Tapper

Have used ghost and powerquest deployment console on projects.
Depending on numbers and your time available really.
For ease of use maybe go the ghost boot disk method.
Are you deploying your images from server or locally via cd/dvd ?
I found out if ya start hammering a server with about 10 concurring builds, the performance (depending on ya servers/network etc) takes a real hammering.
If u do it at normal working day the users wont be pleased.
Server backup times also affected my build times as well.

Have just made some images for my laptops, finalized image, sys prep it,reboot using ghost floppy , save image onto backend partition and write to dvd.
plug in network cable, Load onto target, reboot, image prompts for pc name, adds itself to domain, reboots, logs itself in as admin, time for a coffee

boomer

Cupramax,

the company that i work for sells a product called net-runna that would do the job.

As well as deploying the PCs in the first place, it also provides "self repair" which will put back any files that go missing - so the clients will always boot to a known state, plus various other goodies.

It is popular in schools, as it stops the pupils from messing up the systems (although i can't stop then stealing the mice and sticking chewing gum in the floppy drives ).

As an example, we can deploy Windows NT4.0 to a "bare metal" PC, without the need for a floppy drive or CD, in FORTY FIVE SECONDS!!!! XP is a somewhat larger image (progress ) ), but even then it only take a matter of minutes.

PM me if you would like to know more.

mb

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Is this assuming the target has a 100mbit line or something?

boomer

This was over a standard 10/100 CAT5 Ethernet, so yup - it had a 100Mbit bandwidth (we haven't tried over Giga-bit yet, although some PCs are shipping with such NICs).

The 45 second example was actually via a crossover cable between two systems, thus no switches or other complications - so it is erring towards "best case" conditions. Actually, we have done NT4.0 in 30 seconds with a bit of "tweaking" - but it is a bit academic, 'cos Windoze is much more bloated now

However we can deploy, say, XP to a classroom full of 30 PCs over a production LAN in less than 10 minutes. We also do the host naming and domain joining automatically - which saves a bit of manual tweaking.

Oh, and i forgot to mention that our "image store" on the server is extremely efficient, and hundreds of clients worth of images can be stored in only a few gigabytes of storage - compared with terabytes for, say, Ghost!!

mb

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

That is very

Lum

I would recommend Ghost. You can drive all it's options from the command line, making for idiot proof boot disks. You shoudl also look into the MS utility SysPrep if you're doing 2000 or XP builds, otherwise you will run into SID problems (use GhostWalker if it's NT)

As for the problems of hammering the image server if you try to image 10 machines over the network at once. Ghost Enterprise edition lets you do the builds via multicast which is really really sweet.

Foot_Tapper

Just viewed the net-runna site, very interesting reading.

boomer

Lum,

certainly Ghost is (currently) the most popular imaging tool at the moment, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is easiest to use.

For example, the boot disks have to have the correct network card driver for a given piece of hardware, thus different machines may need different boot floppies. Oh, and each version of Ghost needs a different version of the boot disk - so you can end up with piles and piles of floppies.

Then you have to be sure that the floppies all boot correctly. Load a few tens of machines, but fail to insert one floppy in all the way and AAARRRGGGHHHH - it can be a bugger to find which one needs an extra shove. And this is all assuming that your PCs have a floppy drive - DELLs for example, don't tend to have them by default! Oh, and you had better hope that all the drives work ok. I was at a customer recently, and we needed to update the BIOS on a dozen or so machines. Over HALF had faulty floppy drives (probably the chewing gum bug mentioned above ), so we needed to temporarily connect a drive to do the job. We would have to fix all the drives if we wanted to Ghost boot them

And i think that i am right in saying that with Ghost, you buy licences per machine, and they are NOT transferrable. Thus when you replace hardware, you have to buy new licences rather than re-use old ones!!!

Frightening

mb

darlodge

We used to use ghost but are currently testing [http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d..._overview.asp][RIS].

RIS comes with Windows 2003 server and is free . Its fast, about 5-10 minutes per machine across 100MB switch, multi session, M$ supported, and did I mention its free

The main reason we are using RIS is cost based. AFAIK Ghost requires a licence everytime you re-image a PC. RIS does not

Darren

Lum

I generally make boot CDs rather than boot floppies.
I dunno about the licencing, maybe they've changed it in later versions but we just bought a site licence for Ghost 6 and never worried about it again.
I agree with you on the network card issue, DOS networking is a pain in the backside, I eventually just put all the card drivers onto one disc and had the config.sys attempt to load all of them one after the other, hopefully one of them would suceed, then boot could continue.
Or you could just put the ghost image onto your boot CD, or should that be boot DVD these days?

WRX_Rich

iTrader: (5)

boomer that tool looks good - could you use that tool to install images remotely- we are goin to take on a load more sites and Im try to premote remote work as much as possible but we still have to visit the pc to image, would this be a good way to do this

we use power quest drive image, ghost IS better but the license bit sucks

boomer

WRX_Rich,

you would need a fast link to the remote sites (more like 10/100 ethernet rather than ADSL) because even with compression there is a load of data to transfer.

However there are various ways around this (laptop install, CD/DVD deploy, local cache) that are all part of the "architecture" - i'll PM you with the details.

mb