Quick effective imaging...

[Ben_Stanton]

I have come to find...no effective cloning/imaging process at this school!

 

I would normally use Ghost with multicast. I was wondering if anybody uses anything known to be quicker and more reliable than ghost? Maybe a *nix piece of software?

 

If not, multicasting here I come!

 

Thanks in advance!

[Geoff]

Well you can try RIS (Now known as WDS in W2k3 SP2). There's some stickes in the windows forum covering those options.

 

If you want a *nix based solution then there's Ghost4Linux.

 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l

[Ben_Stanton]

Thanks Geoff - i'll check out the Ghost for Linux

[leon]

Am I right in thinking WDS doesn't throw a wobbly when you try to use an image made for a machine with a different HAL type? This is the main reason I didn't use RIS much. One day I'll just have one image that fits everything!

[Kained]

That leads me to a side question to this topic, can you create an image without drivers, just with the software you want on the machine ?, and let windows request the drivers after install?

[leon]

Must be possible, not sure of the best way to go about it. Maybe use virtualisation and create the image from that? Windows will request the drivers it requires automatically, so it should just be a case of adding non standard ones to the image and ammending the oempnpdriverspath line in the .sif file. I also dimly remember something about changing registry entries to reflect this also, but don't quote me on that.

[Ben_Stanton]

The main problem would be with chipset/mainboard drivers. Rarely can you clone a SIS chipset image to a new drive to go on a VIA board and it boot without BSOD. A way around this is to merge generic or all drivers into the registry. I think if you google mergeide.reg you will find a txt file with what to copy and merge pre-imaging/sysprep!

 

This is definitely a method I have used previously and is effective!

[DMcCoy]

I have image. One image to rule them all as it were

Actually, I have two. One student, one admin - different local user account passwords and admin have sims etc.

 

My images work on VIA, SIS, Intel chipsets and I have added the drivers for 4 different type of machine here. It even detects and changes to multiprocessor HAL for my new machines (testing phase atm).

 

I use only sysprep and Ghost, then WinINSTALL to deploy room specific apps afterwards.

 

Sysprep is great, you can image a machine to work on most other - as long as they have the same HAL type (ACPI or Standard)

 

The bmsd option will build a sysprep file with all of windows HDD drivers so you can run it and then it installs them all before you take the image (this takes an hour on a p4 2.4 - but only creating the sysprep image, not after deploying it).

 

I have altered RIS to give out the ghost client automatically, I no longer use the dreadful console, simply setup a session, F12 to boot machine from network and type the session ID for ghost, sysprep does the rest - just have it prompt for a machine name.

[DMcCoy]

Oh, ghost multicast if much more fun if you have the server plugged into a switch that supports multicast filtering (procurves here). Avoids other switches grinding to a halt.

 

Oh, everything is more fun without broadcom NICs as I discovered today - ghost doesn't work with multicast with the universal PXE driver on 440x's.

[Geoff]

ghost doesn't work with multicast with the universal PXE driver on 440x's.

 

Go back a couple of driver releases. It works then.

[wesleyw]

You could use Netrunna it's not cheap but its fast and uses a lot less space to hold images. Bit of a combination of RIS, Ghost and Deepfreeze. It's also quite a bit quicker to send images down and unbelivably quick if its got the images on the hard drive. You could store about three or four different OS's without impacting to much on hard drive space and in three minutes any version of the OS could be installed with a full software install to. Unlike Deep Freeze it can also filter certain folders and files easily so that it can say this section never needs to be touched but rebuild everything else each reboot. or once a month things like that you can set this on the machine or on the server console it's very good I'm looking at buying it this year to replace my ghost and deepfreeze install.

 

Wes

[Ric_]

You can't get much quicker than thin clients

 

For the fat ones I use RIS (automated install with drivers and a couple of scripts so that one 'image' can be used for everything). Software is then deployed through GPOs.

 

I used to use Ghost but then changed jobs and didn't see the point in spending all that money after the advances in RiS with Server 2003 (2000 Server was a bit ropey IMHO). I haven't tried mixed/native WDS yet... just keeping it in legacy mode for now

[mattx]

Still using Ghost 8.0 - I hold the images on a NAS box - [ freenas ] - open up the ghost cast server on any PC, map the drive to the image and then boot to a boot CD and let it do the rest.

Multicast comes in handy at Summer when I tend to re-build the PCs - having 24 PCs [ PCs in ICT room ] all build at once always makes me laugh...

 

In fact just today I had to download a set of NDIS drivers for the realtek gigabit onboard ethernet card for the laptops that I am building for the wireless network. [ I hate everything wireless at the moment ]

[SimpleSi]

Do all you RIS people with your one image fits all really, really, really save yourself any actual time on this earth with your efforts?

 

And if you beleive you do, how many machines do you estimate you need to have before payback really really happens?

 

regards

Simon

 

PS many times I've "automated" something - but in hindsight, I've just been proving how clever I am and it would have been much easier and better to just have done things manually

[SimpleSi]

Re my PS

Setting up virtual W2k3 servers at my primaries has been a lovely technical challenge but it would have been far easier to just install a plain vanilla setup on a real machine at each site

[Ric_]

@SimpleSi: The RIS thing doesn't take too long to set up... uninterrupted you could do it in a day. It then takes maybe half an hour to an hour after unpacking a new PC to have it installed with Windows and joined to your network... pulling software across with GPOs.

 

Compare the RIS time to that spent installing a PC using a Windows CD, adding the necessary drivers, joining it to the domain, etc. I would say that this would take you a good 3 hours plus it's a PITA having to manually click things.

[SimpleSi]

@Ric

 

I just think you are severely underestimating the time and effort required to reach the stage of being able to do what you are able to do.

 

Don't you need to sysprep, make sure computers can PXE boot, doesn't RIS require something like a separate disk drive on the server for the images (I don't know the facts but I've seen lots and lots and lots of posts about problems and issues )

 

I know you and other experts who've expended time and effort could maybe walk int o a new establishment and get it up and running in only 2-3 times the time you think it would take you , but to start from scratch (I mean not having done RIS before) I believe is a very big undertaking and I just don't believe the payoff is there in actual time saved unless you have large networks of quite dissimlar machines.

 

regards

 

Simon

PS - quite drunk last night when I started this arugment :oops: (and got beaten in the local quiz by a team that seemed to be spending a large amount of time on their mobile phones during the quiz )

[benIT]

Hi All,

 

We use Ghost here (think its corp edition v8). It does the trick well.

 

At present we use 2 floppy disks to boot the console ready to connect to a session on the server. One of the disks has the NIC drivers, the other the ghost program itself.

 

Has anyone managed to get this working on CD or USB pen, this would speed up imaging time 3 fold, as popping in several 3.5 disks is a pain

 

This issue aside, its very easy and quick to use. Hard Disks are so cheap, image sizes are not that much of an issue. A basic server with a few disks in will do the trick here, backup of this server only happens when images change; these are all archived to DVD for disaster recovery pack.

 

We have "base images" for each pc - comprising basics that all machines have, such as vnc, drivers, plugins etc.

 

Then each computer room has its own image with relevent software installed. As the suite changes each room also has revision numbers.

 

During holidays we can image about 60 machines at one time, normally completing in 3 hours. We then join these to the domain, make any tweaks and run ghostwalker whilst the next batch is still ghosting.

 

If a machine fails during school time we have a dedicated network in our workshop to image PCs. This keeps our network running 100% speed.

 

We also have VLANS setup if a whole suite needs reimaging - we can then seperate this from the main network to reduce mass slow downs. imaging during the school day then does not become issue.

 

We then use MST and GPO to deploy most software as very effeciant.

 

I would welcome any input on the usb or CD boot issue though!!

 

Ben

[chrbb]

Not having ghost or the technical ability or actually the spare time to set up ris, if I need to 'redo' a computer I reinstall xp manually, doesn't take too long and can be left to it's own devices for most of the time,I've written autoit scripts for all my software, which is all stored on server, this speeds up the process, one click and a program is installed.

Bit 'slow and old fashioned' but works for me, however, only having 40 ish computers in each school does help.

[Lee_K_81]

 

Has anyone managed to get this working on CD or USB pen, this would speed up imaging time 3 fold, as popping in several 3.5 disks is a pain

 

 

Yup, Makes the process more than 3 times faster. More like 10. Here are some instructions that i found helpful.

 

http://help.ischool.washington.edu/faqs/12_29_en.html

[Norphy]

BenIT, if you have the Corporate version of Ghost, why do you Ghostwalk and join them to the domain manually? All of that can be automated through the console.

 

If I've got the wrong end of the stick I apologise but from the way you worded it, thats how I've interpreted it.

 

As for making a bootable USB or CD for Ghost, I used the HP bootable USB utility to make a bootable USB stick and I use Nero to create my bootable CDs from a floppy drive or USB stick.

[leon]

Agreed, also included with the Corp Ghost Suite is a PXE server/bootdisk utility which is a doddle to setup and means you could joyfully stomp on your piles of boot floppies if your nics support it. ;-)

[Ben_Stanton]

I'm getting around 250mb - 310mb (pulling 260Mbish throughput mostly) and its taking 40 - 50 minutes per image using fast compression.

 

Surely thats not right, there is only one session and its only going to the switch and back. It's only local, i've taken the uplink off the switch.

 

I'm sure I used to get it done quicker - especially hearing people whack out 60 machines in 3 hours!

 

Any thoughts?

[Geoff]

Have you got any QoS implemented on the switch? What does the switch think? Is it having memory or cpu capacity problems with the traffic load?

[john]

I use WDS / RIS in Mixed mode, seem to be getting there with it at last! I can deploy and use my RIS stuff via RIS fine, I have "upgraded" an old RIS image in a fashion to a WDS image, and made a new image as a WIM file and copied it across so I am getting there, another day or so of tinkering and I will have cracked it, just got to get my sysprep scripts sorted as thats where its falling over at present when it boots back up as it doesn't like them for some reason.

 

I used to use Ghost but it seemed poinless paying all that money out for something that is free with Windows,