Microsoft WDS/RIS Alternative

KAZUYA

KAZUYA

KAZUYA

Associate
Joined
28 Sep 2004
Posts
158
Location
United Kingdom, Birmingha
Hi, All

I was wondering if anyone can help.

I work in a secondary school, for the past few years we have been using RIS to create backup & restore computer images.

Nearly over 60% of images we have created in the past year have always had problems with LAN drivers.

I was wondering if someone could help with a software or system which we could use as an alternative.

Features required

1) I would like to be able to create & restore images via network
2) Would like a technology that is less reliant on LAN drivers so I don't get problems like I do with RIS/WDS
3) I would like to create/restore images at a decent speed i.e. faster the better.
4) I would like an Enterprise solution which is the best you can buy & is very reliable.

Would appreciate your insight & help :confused:


Thanks


Kaz
 
Hi

I'm not 100% on the product, as I've only used the Echo Server versions with Universal restore, but the Acronis Snap Deploy is meant to do the same.

I've had it set up to work as a PXE server and you can restore images of machines to different hardware. Check out: www.acronis.com

I don't really have any more information, as I've only tried it once, about a year ago...
 
Ghost Solution Suite
Altiris Rapid Deployment Suite (basically uses Ghosts backend but has a lot more functionality such as deploying software after imaging, PXE support, etc.)



M.
 
m4cc45 said:
Ghost Solution Suite
Altiris Rapid Deployment Suite (basically uses Ghosts backend but has a lot more functionality such as deploying software after imaging, PXE support, etc.)

M.
Click to expand...

Not sure how Altiris does the software deployment stuff, but with ghost you can set it to run things after the image task, and comes with the 3com pxe boot services (altho it's provided with no support).

Altiris was about 5x as much as ghost so depending on your needs Ghost could be adequate.
 
stop using ***** nics? :p

The Acronis suite is pretty good, I've used the PXE offering and it worked well although I was more interested in the universal restore at the time.
 
We use ZENWorks, yes it's a Novell product, No you don't need Netware.

Works great, we've fully scripted ours so that it will push down our base image, followed by the driver files required for that model.

The trickiest bit is getting the Linux NIC drivers required for the imaging process when we get a new model, but there are plenty of resources available on how to compile them.


What problems are you having exactly with NIC drivers?
 
Ev0 said:
Not sure how Altiris does the software deployment stuff, but with ghost you can set it to run things after the image task, and comes with the 3com pxe boot services (altho it's provided with no support).

Altiris was about 5x as much as ghost so depending on your needs Ghost could be adequate.
Click to expand...

Well it has around 10x the functionality of Ghost (hence why Symantec bought it) the console alone is worth the cash imho. It contains a client which you can snapshot the machine or tell the machine to reboot, drop this image on to it, join it to the domain as this, install this software, audit this PC. Deploy software to specific PC's / groups and lots more without trying, but failing, to be boring.

Well worth investing in if you have the cash.


M.
 
Sounds good if you don't already have something like SMS. Ghost does the dropping the image on, joining to domain and installs the base software. Then if people need anything else that's SMS's job.
 
Altiris is my recommendation, used it at Intel and after you've created the image library it works like a charm.
 
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