Ghost Solution Suite

I have not used GSS for a long time but here are some thoughts on what I would like to see.

 

Let us change the compression rates in Ghost Explorer.

 

For example from Fast to High, from None to High or whatever.

Let us install an AI package into a ghost image.

 

Not sure if this is possible, but it would save time ghosting an image down, updating it then re-ghosting.

Have the boot wizard do error checking on the ghost switches (Ghost Boot Wizard).

You know, just make sure what we type in will do something. I already messed up a couple CD's typing in strange things like -close and dst-1, would save some time is all.

 

When making CD's give an option to burn more than one at a time.

 

I made some Boot CD's for a couple Techs, and had to burn one CD at a time. I used all the same settings so I thought it was kind of silly watching it decompress PE, then recompress just to do it all over again.

 

If GSS 2.5 can do any of this and I'm mistaken, please let me know :)

 

Also if anyone else has anything, feel free to post here.

Thanks for you wishlist! Nice to see people caring about ghost :)

 

1. Compression is not that simple in ghost explorer. At the moment ghost explorer understands enough of the GHO format to manipulate it and shuffle things around in theie current state but having compression might be too much to ask of it. However when we do new GHO format then we can do it differently and then perhpas ghost explorer can take advantage of that too.

2. AI. See item above about the new format. If we design it right it should support other cool stuff as well.

3. Good idea even though ghost supports great number of switches but GBW can at least validate some subset that people care and use most often. I'll put feature request for it.

4. Good idea. We added CD/DVD burn support pretty late in the project and had no time to do much more than what we did. To save yourself some time you can burn to ISO instead of DVD and then use any 3rd party utility (Nero etc) to burn as many images as you wish.

 

Thanks!

Few more things I would not mind seeing in GSS 3.0:

 

An ability to stack scheduled ghost backups, when one finished the next kicks off:

Pretty much if I schedule 3 backups to run after hours, instead of guessing how long each one will take, the ghost console would kick off the next one by it's self. Pretty much like Backup Exec.

 

E-mail notifications should a scheduled backup fail:

Also like Backup Exec, have an option to e-mail someone should the backup fail. This way I could schedule ghost tasks for months out and assume they will be done unless I get an e-mail.

be able to tell what step a task is doing as opposed to the last one complete:
Not really that big of a deal, would just be nice to know "Oh, it's running Deployanwhere" instead of "The last thing it did was Deploy Anywhere and I have no clue what it is doing now" 

 

Can't share the console with other users:
Myself and 3 others need the console. Instead of people coming into my office when I'm useing it, it would be nice of they could kick off pre-made tasks on their own. Imagine a program that shows all of the tasks, and they choose to run one, then it runs on the console.

 

When you try to delete a computer from the console, it would be nice if it told you what task was useing it.
Have you ever tried deleting a computer and then needing to track it down out of hundreds of tasks? I know there is a script for this but sometimes I want the task to stay.

 

Thats about all I can think of, again if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to post em on here.

Be able to change the order of operations in tasks so we can do different things.

Replace 3Com PXE boot to work with Windows Deployment Services (which, quite honestly I don't think WDS works by itself let alone cooperate with another program). 

 

The annoyance of DeployAnywhere not working when cloning a pc who's drive operation (ATA vs SATA vs AHCI), DA fails on retargeting.

 

 

Thanks.

 

As you can understand WDS is not a great priority to us. However GSS 2.5 Winpe can run with WDS with a small fix. I have been working with few other people on a trial version. Please email me via forum private email with your coordinates if you are interested.

 

We are working on enhancing and extending DA for 3.0. Hopefully this problem as well as others will be addressed.

 

Hi Cobra,

 

---

 

Can't share the console with other users:
Myself and 3 others need the console. Instead of people coming into my office when I'm useing it, it would be nice of they could kick off pre-made tasks on their own. Imagine a program that shows all of the tasks, and they choose to run one, then it runs on the console.

 

 

---

 

 

 

At least this can be done with 2.5 :-)  It is possible to execute a task from command line without using the Console by running 'ngcons /e <taskname>'. You need to use RD or similar app. Actually, you can define a template task and provide other data (like machine names, images names etc.) through command line interface too.

 

Bornsleepy,  

 

 

---

The annoyance of DeployAnywhere not working when cloning a pc who's drive operation (ATA vs SATA vs AHCI), DA fails on retargeting.

---

Could you tell me the models of machines and OSs you use (task step details of the failure would be nice)? I have heard of this failure but did not get enough info. We may be able to resolve it by adding drivers to driver database or to the source image. 

 

 

Krish

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would like the Tools > Options > Client > Virtual Partition Default PreOS dropdown box to actually do something. Having to change the default preos on each machine group is irritating (not to mention that doesn't even seem to work).

 

Also, being able to delete a driver listing from the winPE editor (delete, not just uncheck) would be nice. Actually, same thing with the DA driver db editor.

 

In terms of real wishlist-type stuff, it would be nice to be able to right-click errors in the task log that state "preOS missing drivers for x," and have them add the device info to the skip.pci.manifest without having to open and edit the it manually.

Why go to trouble by doing on every machine via tools->options->client->vp when you can just right-click on a group and 'set vp os'? :)

 

DA and Winpe share same driver database and we are working on better driver management for GSS 3.0.

 

It is dangerous to go down this path. People might do this so easily that they can forget the list of skipped devices they've added. When you go to preos and you dont have one of the storage drivers you can accidentaly clone over something you dont want - this is bad.

---

Eugene Manko wrote:

Why go to trouble by doing on every machine via tools->options->client->vp when you can just right-click on a group and 'set vp os'? :)

---

 

Primarily, because when I click on a group and set the vp os, it doesnt seem to retain the setting anyway. the tools>options>client>vp setting (i would think) should be a global setting that overrides the default-- if you want to change a machine group to a different preos, thats something you can do, but you should be able to change them all at once as well.

 

DA and winpe may share the same driver database, but since I have to add vista drivers for winpe and XP drivers for DA, they're essentially different to me. Deleting one driver won't necessarily have an impact on both DA and winpe.

 

I've already forgotten the list of skipped devices I've added. I've tried to comment in the file with #name before, after, and in the middle of brackets, but it never seems to work with comments.

I dont know why it doesnt retain settings for you. We have had no reports of this setting not being stick yet.

 

skip manifest file is not a text file and you cannot just put comments somewhere and expect it to be processed. This file is text rendered hasmap so you have to take care when editing it. Can you please post contents that didnt work for you with comment in the beggining of the line and I will be happy to help you out.

({
   0x8086 = {
        0x2929 = ()
    }
}{
   0x1002 = {
        0x4391 = ()
    }
}{
   0x104c = {
        0x8033 = ()
    }
}#8710p laptop{
   0x8086 = {
        0x2829 = ()
    }
})

 

I would like to note on each line which PC/which device I am skipping, so when I look at the file (or anyone else, for that matter), it's obvious why each entry is in there. I tried entering this comment like the last entry there, but it didn't work.

 

In the theme of wishlisting, it would be nice for something to tell me that the syntax of my skip.pci.manifest is wrong, so I dont have to waste time rebuilding the winPE over and over again. 

In this spirit of the original skip.manifest file it would be much cleaner to keep every device to one line :) Then you would see why this arent working for you.

 

(

{   0x8086 = {        0x2929 = ()    }}

{   0x1002 = {        0x4391 = ()    }}

{   0x104c = {        0x8033 = ()    }}

#8710p laptop{   0x8086 = {        0x2829 = ()    }}

)

 

This way you are telling that not line but an entire hashmap entry is to be commented out. Previously you tried commenting out middle of hashmap "#8710p laptop{". Thus parser will never be able to read it back in. I know we could have done better with skip.manifest file but giving people something is better than not giving anything and this was the best solution we came up with in Live update timeframe.

 

I'll put enhancement request for GSS 3.0 for this.

Yeah, I like one line per entry much better. I'll use that from now on.

 

The skip.pci.manifest does its job just fine; I just thought I'd comment for future improvements.

 

Thanks, and keep up the good work.

thanks for the info

Krish,

 

The models were the Dell Optiplex 755, but realisitcally, it would happen on any pc.  The problem turned out to be, capturing an image of a new 755, which has the drive mode set to AHCI in the BIOS, then trying to put it on a machine that doesn't have it supported.  Windows configures the pci.sys file based off a number of factors, drive operation is one of them.  So basically the targeted pc will go into a boot loop, after failing DeployAnywhere eval and retargeting.  If you search on this forum, I had a pretty lengthy post about it.

 

Thanks,

tim

One thing that could be kind of cool for GSS 3.0 would be a client console.

You start your console on your own PC, and log it into a server console. You can see what tasks are running and be able to kick off tasks in the console. Then you can point it to another server console and work on that one.

Addition to "An ability to stack scheduled ghost backups, when one finished the next kicks off:"
I would like the capability to allow tasks to be chained together with pass/fail options. For example if an workstation fails to join a domain I would like to call a subsequent task to try to join the domain

Provide a Reboot option in Task under Software and Files
We would like a way to add reboot in the middle of the Software and Files area and be able to continue with more actions after the reboot.

Edit AI without source machine.
Edit and AI after without having to grab the files. You can edit the EXE in the AI builder but you still need the source files.

Allow AI to have more than 2GB worth of files.
Our applications are getting quite large. Today we zip up the files separately and then use a command line extraction with a RunOnExit command. Automate a way to do this.

 

Does anyone have any idea when 3.0 will be released?  I'm waiting for DA to be able to install all drivers.

Last December I heard it was a year from then more or less. As far as I know there is no official word so it could be 9-12 months from now I suppose.

I made this post early to get some attention to things we would like while there was (is?) still time to do them.

Thanks.

I believe it's been commented earlier, but to state more clearly.  An improved task scheduling system that dosent rely on Windows Task Scheduler.  Said system should have the ability to branch between steps built within a job.  As part of the improved process it should also be e-mail capable to notify people of success/failure of scheduled tasks. 

 We are planning a GSS 3.0 beta around June. Will publish the details in the forum around early May, please stay tuned ..


Krish

Is there any word the the GSS 3.0 beta . . . as it is almost June. 

 Hi,

Apologies for disappointing, but the plan has changed. I will update the thread as soon as information is available.

Krish

Hi,

here is my wishlist:

- one international version with different language files
- a web based alternative console with differnt user and roles
-  WIM file support for images
- gPXE (http://etherboot.org/wiki/index.php) support for booting from a webserver, image files over ftp & http(s) (for homeworkers & small offices)
- abilty to save only changes to a new image and bundle the old and the new images to one package

Any update as to when GSS 3 beta will be released?

The release of the features we've been contemplating for GSS 3 has been pushed out by at least six months. We'll communicate the new date as soon as scoping efforts are completed. We're working on providing Windows 7 support in GSS well ahead of that release, however. We'll get word out on the details as soon as more information is available.

Just wondering if there is an update considering Windows 7 is RTM.

We would like to see a working boot wizard that does not throw up obscure errors when I try to add my .Gho files to the <st1:stockticker>DVD</st1:stockticker>.  If the software is limited in how much data can be added to the image, document it and give me a proper error message if I’m trying to add too much.  I’m currently only trying to add 3.5gigs of image files to my boot disk.

We would also like to see better documtation on automation for self contained recovery disks.

How about fixing the liveupdate bug so I dont have to run update 4 seperate times to get current?  If not, give me some notification that I need to run it again.

"We would like to see a working boot wizard that does not throw up obscure errors when I try to add my .Gho files to the DVD.  If the software is limited in how much data can be added to the image, document it and give me a proper error message if I’m trying to add too much.  I’m currently only trying to add 3.5gigs of image files to my boot disk."

This is because the data needs to load in the RAM. While it seems like a great idea to load .gho files this way it is not what is was designed to do. It was intended to be to load small troubleshooting utilities. A live update changed this because loading too much would cause problems.

Pretty much the more RAM you have on the PC the more you can put on the disk. There are other posts that talk about this as well.

Just an FYI.

At least give me a proper error box, or document the problem so I can architect another solution.  I’ve wasted a lot of time chasing this down.

I'd like to see Microsoft Virtual Harddisk (VHD) file support as source image to deploy, next to the current VMware harddisk file support.

I really like the way that the altiris client has some type of vnc client running. It would be great if it's disabled until the console activates the "veiw PC" or whatever they call it. This really makes life easier when you can view 1 PC and control 50+ (or however many are in the group). This would really be great. (I don't care if the mouse movements aren't perfect as long as the keystrokes are. :)   Steel that code from your brothers over @ Altiris. :)

I second the need for VHD & WIM support.

I don't like the idea of integrating w/ WDS -- it would be a great option, but I'd prefer to keep them separate as the default. I do think that the 3com stuff needs to go, and integrating pxelinux or gpxelinux would be my vote (I'm very biased though)

Cheers,
-Ben

Hi,

here is my wishlist:

- Linux LVM support.

I would love to be able to mount a .gho file. That would be more flexible than using ghost explorer, and could be done from both linux or windows.

1. When launching Ghost tasks from the Console, let me force Ghostcast Server to go ahead to just manually go "now" with whatever PCs it has joined.  Sometimes PCs fail to join the Ghostcast correctly on their own.  Right now, Ghostcast Server will wait for the default timeout before it starts to roll out the task.  If I know that a PC isn't going to come back, I should be able to manually tell it just to start cloning the image now.
2. Ability to pause/resume image creation and deployment tasks. Some of the images I have are in the 50gb range and can take hours to build.  This can bog down the network and server I'm using.  I'd like to be able to pause/resume Ghost image deployment tasks so that if I need to temporarily work on something else, I can do that and come back without starting the task from scratch.
3. More detailed, user-friendly error logging.  The error messages that Ghost generates tend to be pretty cryptic and the logs are hard to analyze.  Provide more detailed errors (and more granular error codes) and give me logs that provide a better idea of what was happening in case of trouble.
4. Make tasks more adaptive to system performance (i.e., reduce timeouts).  Since I upgraded from GSS 2.0 to GSS 2.5, I've run into a lot of problems with timeouts when creating images.  It's been hard to track down what is happening (see above message about logs), but I do know the server is still working with the Ghost image right up until the client drops out.  Why can't the client be better about waiting, pausing, or slowing down rather than just giving up.

I would love to see regedit integrated w/ Ghost Explorer. It's a pain to extract the files and open them in the windows regedit and drag them back to the image.

I've already posted this else where, but I'm going to do it again anyway.

:)

More virtuliaztion formats supported. The vmdk support is fantastic and I use it everyday. If ghost32 (or 64) could also convert to vhd, vdi, img, xen, etc, it would be the ultimate P2V & V2V software out there. 

Free upgrades! :) My company's broke -- please don't make us pay for this. :(

(it was worth a shot, right?)

cheers,

Release it sometime soon...

Not that would be nice...

The projected date posted in another thread was for Win7 support to be ready in Jan/Feb 2010. That probably means June/July or maybe just in time for Win 7 SP1 whenever that is !!!

+1. What about

Plan A: getting LiveUpdate to live up to its name, and actually update ALL the various components of GSS. Many low cost shareware (or freeware) programs out there have built-in online updates that work really well... What is the big deal?

Plan B: at the very least, find a secure way to alert customers that updates are available, and provide a link, without having us to come and ask for one on the forum

thanks,
Luca

#1 -- IA64 Support for at least Ghost64.exe. RIght now mass deployments of IA64 systems are not really possible with Ghost. Our current work arround of plugging the disks into x86 or x64 machines and imaging there and moving back is clunky, slow, and painful.

#2 -- Full LVM support.
#2.1 -- Full LVM support in WinPE
#2.2 -- Full Windows Dynamic Disk Support

#3 -- Higher throuput. We use local ghost and CIFS share. On newer hardware we should be able to easily reach sustained 1Gb/s speeds. We are already starting to deply 10Gb/s servers. Image sizes have climed significantly (new Windows versions, larger apps) since GSS 2.5. Some of our larger images (200GB) take a full day. This should take less than an hour over a 1GbE link.

#1 Multi user Console,

#2 If possible Mac support

 

Ghost 2.5 supported Fedora Core 8. Then came Fedora Core 9, which was not supported. Then came Fedora Core 10, then Fedora Core 11 and now Fedora Core 12. The tally now is that the 4 most recent Fedora distibutions are NOT supported. The same goes for current distributions of CentOS, Ubuntu and the like.

Basically, Ghost 2.5 support the equivalent of Windows NT or 2000, but nothing newer. That is pretty sad. The problem is that Linux distros moved from 128 byte inodes to 256 byte inodes. That is where Ghost 2.5 jumped ship. The only possible method is to clone the entire disk using the -ial switch, which tends to be impossible when your system has an 80GB or larger drive. Linux images used to be less than 2GB. An 80GB image is not going to work, and that is if you even manage to pull it off. Then you end up multicasting 80GB on your network, instead of 2GB. It is not a functional solution.

Ghost 3 needs to support CURRENT, secure Linux distributions. We can't even run Fedora 8 on our network without violating security policies, because vulnerabilites are not being patched for Linux distributions that old. We can't even run Fedora Core 9. In about a month, Fedora will end support for Fedora Core 10 as well, since they just released verion 12. Symantec is a company who's products that deals with security.

I also would like to see support voor IPv6, in case it wasn't yet planned

1. They need to have a proper search function within the ghostconsole which doesn't rely on each machine having an inventory

2. It would be good if you could drag and drop accounts from one folder to another within the ghost console

3. also active directory integration would be good

Since the GSS 2.51 Beta just got announced, I figure 3.x will be a while :) 

Since I never got around to 2.5, I just don't know.  But I'm surprised to see some of those wishlist items still on the list from back when 2.x and even 1.x was around (namely the task ordering/timing/branching logic thing.)  To me, this is still the big thing :)

Someone mentioned web console, which I'd personally disagree with (or put down far on the list of stuff.)  Or only if it's built-in to the Ghost software.  Last thing I need is to install the entiretly of Apache or IIS just to get a webconsole.  A tiny built-in, just-for-Ghost web server-esque thing would be ok.  But i'd rather see the mulitple consoles option - eg: i run a "mini console" on my desktop which just in turn connects/logs-in to the main Ghost Console.  It just keeps me  from having to deal with RDP sessions, but it's handy if you have more than a few techs.  It probably amounts to the same amount of work - create a mini-console or create a mini-web-server.

Linux, etc are nice but not a big deal (for me.)  Imho, I'm surprised to see so much support/need for Linux with Ghost.  Linux support on Ghost always kinda seemed like an after thought or feature add on for PR/marketing sake (the checkbox column that says I have it, but you don't, kinda thing.)  Obviously, I've not gone down the Symantec Ghost for Linux path, but I do use BSD (and Linux) a lot on a regular basis and always felt there might be better other applications for "ghosting" Linux, no?  I suppose having one consolidated program to do both Windows and Linux would be nice, just to not to have to have a second program around (yet one more thing to learn, maintain, etc.)

For the most part, I think everything I'd like to see in future revisions of Ghost are already on this list somewhere.  While I might argue with the order of importance, I do hope we'll eventually get to see everything on this thread :)
PH

to add on to point 3.  When you double click the ERROR in the event log, how about a basic description so we now what we are getting into.  It would be nice to see "inaccessable device" and know maybe the motherboard mounted a zip drive as drive 1 and the HD as 2, and not have to dig through that log to find it, and not just "view error log".