[windows2000] Re: setting up a ghost server

No problem.

 

-- 

/Sorin

 

From: windows2000-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:windows2000-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Patrick
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 4:26 PM
To: windows2000@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [windows2000] Re: setting up a ghost server

 

Thanks. I will have a look at it 

 

  _____  

From: Sorin Srbu <sorin.srbu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: windows2000@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tue, April 13, 2010 3:21:06 PM
Subject: [windows2000] Re: setting up a ghost server

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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