Deployment and Imaging Group

Hey guys,

looking at using multicasting for my imaging. but just can't make head or tale of it.

I've looking everywhere for documentation for step by step approach to make it work but cannot find any.

I understand the concept but going through the ds and all the multicast settings i come across just confuses me..... (i've taken a screenshot of all the multicast settings i've found, and all the settings are different)

Just hoping someone can help me out here....

the network i'm working on will support multicast.... so it should be all down to the setting in ds then

ds 6.9 sp5

image: redploy win 7 image

preboot: winpe

sorry guys,

my image distribution job was in a script and not a deployment job... that's the only reason multicasting did not work.

multicast worked straight out of the box... nice :-)

First -thanks for including all these screenshots. It really helps, and it's no wonder you are confused. First here are some docs that will help;

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO4233

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO3190

As you've seen, there are various places where multicast is used with Deployment Server, and each screenshot you've shown is for a different feature.

Mutlicast-WinPE Setting.jpg
This sets how the agent in WinPE should locate the deployment server. It can be located by using multicast discovery, or by connecting to the Deployment Server directly. The recommendation is for using a direct TCP connection to the server using the server's IP address.

PXE-Multicast-Settings.jpg
This is for configuring your PXE server so to permit automation images to be downloaded by multicast tftp. This only applies for DOS (not supported for Linux/WinPE) so I tend to turn this MTFTP off. Please do not get confused with this option relating to the download of your .img or .gho files though -its only useful for downloading the couple of MB of DOS automation files.

rdeploy multicast settings.jpg
This is the mutlicast range used for delivering your ghost/rdeploy image files to your clients. The defaults here are fine.

This screen you HAVE missed which is the most important one for implementing multicast imaging is the one found in the Deployment Server Configuration Utility,

Start Menu ->All Programs-> Altiris-> Deployment Solution -> Configuration

Click Options and the select the 'disk imaging' tab. Here you can set the mutlicast threshold, which is the simultaneous client imaging point at which a multicast imaging session will be triggered. The default trigger point is four clients. 

Hope this helps. And you are right -it can be very confusing.

ah.. yes. That would do it. If you use an image job, the engine can configure each of the rdeploy commands sent to the clients uniquely to ensure that the rdeploy imaging sessions are configured appropriately (by tweaking the command-line options).

If you call you rdeploy commands in a script, you are bypassing that process and enforcing a unicast session from every client.