[windows2000] Re: setting up a ghost server
- From: "Sorin Srbu" <sorin.srbu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <windows2000@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:21:06 +0200
Well, you have this opensource cd-image that you burn and then boot your
windows machine with. It will then go out and aquire an ip from an
dhcp-server and then continue booting from the cd. When done you get the
choice to either clone the Windows disk or partitions to an ftp-server, or
retrieve a cloned disk or partition image from the the same ftp-server.
The solution works fine if you have many identical Win-machines. FWIW, it
reads the client disk (or partitions) bit-by-bit, so g4u is not limited to
cloning MS-machines only. Most everything goes that can boot from the cd.
Clonezilla is a fork of this I believe, with a plethora of “GUI”’s added,
progress indicators and what not. G4u (“ghost for unix”) is good enough
though for me. ;-)
My setup over here is with thirty-some Fujitsu-Siemens E600’s with identical
hardware plus a dozen or so OEM’s with ranging hardware. Some time ago I
installed one FSC-machine with WinXP and Office and put it in a workgroup. I
then cloned it and used the same image for the rest of the E600’s. Adding
the machine to the domain I do manually, and at which point it will download
and install the rest of the software using regular AD-GPO’s.
The solution is still usable as long as the machine architecture is in the
<5 types range or so, more than that and then the image sizes might be
starting to give some problems if the ftp-server space is limited.
One way around that is to use a perl-script to zero all empty non-written
sectors on the client disk, as this will greatly reduce the image size
afterwards. I’ve seen 50% improvements in image size on a 40-80GB hd.
Did I mention it’s free, open-source?
More info about g4u on below links.
Authors documentation:
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/
A quick and durty howto:
http://www.tech-geeks.org/geeklog/article.php?story=20030507102947786
Get the software:
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/#reqs
HTH.
--
/Sorin
From: windows2000-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:windows2000-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Patrick
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 3:57 PM
To: windows2000@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [windows2000] Re: setting up a ghost server
Probably. Tell me more about this product
_____
From: Sorin Srbu <sorin.srbu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: windows2000@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tue, April 13, 2010 2:53:35 PM
Subject: [windows2000] Re: setting up a ghost server
Have you ever considered g4u? You can deploy clones from an intranet
ftp-server and all you need is the boot-cd. Would that help anything?
--
/Sorin
From: windows2000-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:windows2000-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Patrick
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 3:07 PM
To: windows2000@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [windows2000] setting up a ghost server
Hi Guys,
I am trying to setup a ghost server to stop us from having to work around
with a boot disk.
Anyone got any whitepapers on how to do this.
Current environment
win2k3
XP sp3 desktops
Ghost floppy with image on external usb hard disk.
Preferred solution.
Ghost server, with PXE boot option, and all images on ghost server share.
Thanks
Pat
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