What is the best Alternative to Norton Ghost for PXE boot imaging?

[Carter]

I've used ghost years ago and for our competitions here we need a solution to create an image and deploy over the network. We need a solution that does not require sysprep which rules out SmartDeploy & WDS. For our situation we need to simply image and restore computers. Sysprep is more of an issue than a benefit for us.

[snagrat]

Not sure why Sysprep would be a problem. Use it with MDT and you can have a fully automated deployment solution

[Arthur]

MDT. You could create a custom task sequence that simply deploys your image without sysprepping.

 

Are you using DeepFreeze?

[FN-GM]

CloneZilla can do this no worries.

[mikeprice]

I am also wonderign why Sysprep is a problem

 

Partly because it is a problem for me and I can't find out why. (after syswprep the PC won't restart and the image just produces a PC that won't restart)

 

However -once sysprep problems are sorted I WDS would work fine for me (I think)

[timbo343]

I've used ghost years ago and for our competitions here we need a solution to create an image and deploy over the network. We need a solution that does not require sysprep which rules out SmartDeploy & WDS. For our situation we need to simply image and restore computers. Sysprep is more of an issue than a benefit for us.

 

we used to use Ghost 7.5 until this year and now going with WDS/MDT. Its a lot easier once it's setup and syspreping is not like it used to be on XP nor on Win7 when creating images.

 

Not sure why you dont want to use sysprep though. The only time we dont use sysprep is when we take a full copy of an admin machine which is configured for office use, then we use clonezilla. Everyone else gets an image which has been syspreped.

 

You could use FOG or set up a CloneZilla server.

[Michael]

Unless you're running a standalone configuration, I can't see why you wouldn't run Sysprep either.

 

Joining 100 devices manually to a domain - no thanks!

[kenshirou]

Do yourself a favour and go FOG don't waste time with WDS

[birchanger]

Do yourself a favour and go FOG don't waste time with WDS

 

Why would you say that? I've set up both, and found that MDT (with WDS to handle the PXE-boot) is by far the more flexible. I also found it easy to set up, but then I did invest in a superb book from the Deployment Fundamentals people. FOG is good if your needs are more than just Windows, and if you're happy to set up and administer a LAMP (or WAMP) stack, but for Windows the ability to manage the drivers, direct applications at certain roles, rename computers based on the computer identity and so on make it a no-brainer, to me.

 

The only real question is not FOG v MDT, but MDT/WDS v SCCM/MDT.

Edited June 6, 2016 by birchanger

[mavhc]

I just copy the wim from the install iso to wds, no sysprep.

[Fazza]

We went from Imaging with Ghost to using SCCM purely for imaging via PXE and now use it for some much more! Cheap as chips on a school licence agreement.

[dhicks]

I just copy the wim from the install iso to wds, no sysprep.

 

We use Serva in a very similar fashion - non sysprep-ed image, we just boot over PXE and install Windows from the WIM file as found on the install ISO (actually, we now use DISM to add all relevant Windows updates to the image, too). Installation is automated via an unattend.xml file, we have a script that renames each machine based on its MAC address and joins it to the domain. Serva supports installing other operating systems than Windows over PXE - we have setups for Debian, Fedora, RedHat and XenServer as well if we wish.

[Mustang]

Not sure what the issue with sysprep is but;

 

Microsofts official deployment recommendations say to use MDT/WDS to deploy straight from the OS WIM file and add applications/updates as needed without creating a syspreped reference image but they also do state that in an education environment creating a reference image maybe quicker due to the number of identical computers

[Carter]

Sorry for the long post!

 

Don't get me wrong, sysprep is a great tool but in our environment it makes for more of a mess than it's worth.

 

I work for a college and we use sysprep with WDS and it's great but I also volunteer with Skills Canada.

 

For those that live else where in the world you would have a similar non for profit skills competition like Skills US, Skills Germany etc. that's held once a year with it being in a different province, state etc. each year. As it's world wide for each country there's also World Skills competitions that are held every two years with the winning contestants from each country competing for World Skills Gold.

 

Anyways back to what our team does.

 

We're just volunteers so basically we arrive days before the event and I would be in charge to build 10-14 PC & Mac images from the ground up. (Mac building and deployment dirt simple with Deploy Studio) but ya each image could be on different hardware but the image is built on the hardware the competition would be using.

 

With such a short time frame I try to get all required software installed and configured and setup so that we can just image it to a image laptop that we would then take to the setup and image the competition computers.

 

With such a short timeframe I can't be sitting there dealing with setting up sysprep. We don't worry about drivers since they are in the image, naming is of no concern and we don't bind to any domain services since they are contained within their own individual network.

 

They are imaged and only used for two days then all competitions are broke down.

 

Unless we configure sysprep for each laptop image station we would have driver issues and other changes made that we don't want.

 

Because each competition is isolated to itself we normally quickly make a laptop for that competition a decorated image server but these are made quick so we can get running.

 

I like the idea of Fog but I had no luck when I was testing it and also tried CloneDeploy with the same result.

 

We used CloneZilla last year and had issues so we went to a mix of SmartDeploy and CloneZilla this year. This year because we ran into the issue of partition sizes with CloneZilla (source being a larger HD than target) and we couldn't resolve this quick we then used Smart Deploy and saved our butts.

 

Anyways that's the long story but that's why I'd like to look into a image deployment method without sysprep.

[Norphy]

You can take an image of a hard disk using DISM or ImageX without sysprepping it. You can then boot the PCs being imaged into Windows PE and apply the image from a network share on another computer, assuming that the PE image has the NIC drivers and DISM or ImageX.

 

You wouldn't want to do that for 100s of computers but it'd work for your scenario.

[dhicks]

We're just volunteers so basically we arrive days before the event and I would be in charge to build 10-14 PC & Mac images from the ground up. (Mac building and deployment dirt simple with Deploy Studio) but ya each image could be on different hardware but the image is built on the hardware the competition would be using.

 

Windows will install by itself on most hardware these days, with no extra drivers needed - generally, as long as it can recognise the network card it will pick up any graphics drivers and so on from Windows Update. You can automate a Windows installation with an unattend.xml file. Also, adding Windows updates to the standard Windows install image with the DISM tool is probably a good idea. We install over our network via PXE, but you could put your customised install on a DVD or USB stick instead. For software installation after Windows installation we use a script that simply runs a bunch of installers one after the other.

[mavhc]

I used to use imagex.exe with windows xp, so I could use wds, got a script somewhere that wipes the drive and imagex's the data back to the client after booting with WinPE

[cpjitservices]

Ghost... I love MDT/WDS/Clonezilla/FOG but...... Ghost is boss.