Net-runna

is anybody using net-runna? it's sort of like faronic's deep-freeze.

Our LEA have just been pushing this and it does look very impressive. Those using Ghost at the demo we were at seemed very impressed and up for giving it a go. We are thinking about the possibility if the price is right as a quick way to swap OS's or create clean KS3 test machines that can be returned to normal double quick.

The LEA is trying to get a county pricing so we are unsure of costs at teh moment.

We have Deepfreeze already. And what a great program it is.

Going back a few years the problem with this type of system was the updating of Antivirus libraries and other updates. i.e. when you restored the system it reinstalled the old versions.

Is this sort of problem been resolved?

Alan,

regarding virus definitions etc. - with net-runna it is possible to turn off "self repair" for given folders (such as the AV definitions one). That way you always have a system in a known O/S state, but with the latest antivirus configuration.

If you want a more permanent image, you can capture AV settings, patches etc. either for each indivudual PC, or very quicky re-deploy an updated image to groups of PCs (in minutes).

And depending on how your anti-virus works, you could use "repair on demand", which won't reset your PCs unless you choose to do so (e.g. after a harddrive failure).

We are only just up the road in Tamworth, so give us a shout if you want to know more.

Cheers,

Martin

(looking for an argument)

What's the point of these things? A limited user can't do any damage to an XP PC anyway. They can only write to their profile folder, and that can be reset at every logon using Mandatory Profiles.

(brace for attack...)

MSs free shared computer toolkit also does the job, plus allows updates.

@ajbritton:

Well even if they can't the OS sometimes gets corrupted and this would in theory prevent this as well add to that ghost images or RIS and you have a system where the computer could be completely rebuilt in <40 mins (depending on image size network speed) add to the fact that this won't happen often with a program or hardware like net-runna or deepfreeze and you have a very reliable system without a lot of firefighting.

Wes