Client Imaging - Over a network ?

thedoc46

thedoc46

thedoc46

Soldato
Joined
18 Jan 2003
Posts
5,995
Location
Expat in the USA
Hi all,

I've been assigned a project to automate some form of client imaging, a little like Ghost or Acronis or DPM for an entire person's machine over our network.

I guess I'll need some storage at each of the sites. We are talking 3 sites, each with about 20 users.

Has anyone in the IT field had a similar project? what were your findings? and what is the easiest and cost effective solution you went for?
 
The most cost effective solutions would be something like http://www.fogproject.org/ or Clonezilla Server, both are free.
Fog can do some pretty cool things, I have it running at work with plugins which automatically change the machines host-name and join the domain. It can do various other things too.
However it does need to be installed on Linux and whilst its not too hard if you've not done much with Linux before it might be a little tricky.
 
iDroid84 said:
It isn't considering there are free ways to image.... depends what the OP wants to do really.

A deployment can be built from the XP/Vista/7 disks using sysprep and answer files and then free PXE boot environments.
Click to expand...

Just because there's a free alternative doesn't mean it's more cost effective, especially if the people using it will need to spend a while configuring, learning and testing it to ensure it's fit for purpose. The cost of a ghost license is pretty small, so if they've already used it - that could well work out better.

OP - I'm confused, it's 20 PCs in 3 sites? I'll be completely honest it almost sounds a tad overkill to be setting this up. Create images, put them on bootable DVDs and use them instead. User needs the PC reimaged? Tell them to put it in the drive and turn the PC on, then remote on and finish it off once windows boots etc.

The cost of licensing ghost or sorting out an automated imaging DVD for each model of PC is likely to be less than getting storage or a PXE server etc setup and running for each site, unless they're already connected with a decent link.

Does you're company already have licenses for anything that could incorporate this already? Such as SCCM?
 
I find that clonezilla on a usb stick and a portable usb (3) drive is the fastest. The imaging process can be as quick as 3-5 mins and the sysprep from 8-15 mins, depending on the pc spec. Use the unattend.xml to prompt for pc name and auto login with admin and auto activate windows. Unless you have a full gigabit network.

Using the same method but instead of using clonezilla use WDS and create and import the wim image in to the source media and deploy windows as unattended install. This has the advantage of not being hardware specific but I have not tested how long it will take to install. But if you have different types of hardware it might be the best solution.
 
Last edited:
No, 3 sites each with about 20 = 60 users. I need the imaging on the fly, so if i machine gets a virus or whatever, it doesn't need rebuilding fixing, just to recover from the most recent and latest image that was automatically created via this solution.

Not looking for free, but a easy to configure and deployable solution.
 
I use acronis to do stuff like this , I use it for 3 sites with about 700 PC's in total across those sites

PC downtime is bad for our company , with loss in excess of 10,000 - 15,000 per hour
on some systems if it is down

The corp ver has a remote console to connect to machines, which is well handy
 
Last edited:
lurkio said:
I use acronis to do stuff like this , I use it for 3 sites with about 700 PC's in total across those sites

PC downtime is bad for our company , with loss in excess of 10,000 - 15,000 per hour
on some systems if it is down

The corp ver has a remote console to connect to machines, which is well handy
Click to expand...

For the loss per hour I would never in a million years thought you would have used Acronis for a recovery system.
 
lurkio said:
I use acronis to do stuff like this , I use it for 3 sites with about 700 PC's in total across those sites

PC downtime is bad for our company , with loss in excess of 10,000 - 15,000 per hour
on some systems if it is down

The corp ver has a remote console to connect to machines, which is well handy
Click to expand...
I'm presuming you have copy of the images stored locally? I'd be quite interested in knowing a bit more if you can talk about it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom