Ghosting

mrb

New Member
Hi there,

At the school i work i use Symantec Ghost, To image the computers. If anyone else images computers what do you use?

We are currently running ghost off usb sticks as we were having problem imaging across the network.
 
Ghost = ungodly expensive...

On the Mac side I use the Casper Suite from JAMF software and on the PC side I use Acronis True image.

Every summer I reimage 6,000 Macbooks over the network. At my old job we used Zen imaging from Novell and I wrote a shell script to automate the process.

I have also used DRBL in the past which is free and open source and I have dabbled a bit with Deploy Studio, which is also free.
 
I used to use ghost, now I use Acronis true image server ( also expensive). At work we use ALTIRIS, which has some plus and minuses. They have something called PCT6 that we use to transfer files and settings for a tech refresh or when we have to do a wipe and reload. They also have regular image creation. The one plus I like about ghost is the setting in configuration to continue to copy even if bad sectors are incountered.
 
"casper" thats a funny name

It is the best thing since sliced bread, love their product!

I used to use ghost, now I use Acronis true image server ( also expensive). At work we use ALTIRIS, which has some plus and minuses. They have something called PCT6 that we use to transfer files and settings for a tech refresh or when we have to do a wipe and reload. They also have regular image creation. The one plus I like about ghost is the setting in configuration to continue to copy even if bad sectors are incountered.

Ghost is one of the easier ones to set up, especially for advanced features and multicasting, however, it is so freaking expensive. It is also just an imaging app, where as the Casper Suite is a package and policy manager and does so much more than just imaging. It is only for the Mac platform unfortunately, as if it were for Windows also I would recommend it.
 
thats right clonezilla...i tried that once before and didnt get very good results. Ill play around with these some time thank you.
 
thats right clonezilla...i tried that once before and didnt get very good results. Ill play around with these some time thank you.

yeah DRBL uses clonezilla on the client level, the DRBL part is the PXE boot server. I set one up about 3 years ago in the shop to test it out. It is a fantastic, small scale, imaging solution. However, if you are looking for an Enterprise solution with lots of network management it won't quite cut it.

You can set clonezilla to run off an external drive or even a bootable DVD. However, netboot/PXE boot imaging is by far the fastest.

If you have any questions let me know, and perhaps I can remember from 3 to 4 years ago what I did.
 
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