NAMING CONVENTION USING GHOST SUITE 2.5/ GHOST 11.5

The Console will do what you want it just takes a little getting used to. If you want to stick w/ PXE you'll need to create different boot disks w/ the boot wizard. What will happen is you'll send a task from the console using WOL, clone, & configure. The selected PC(s) will power on and PXE boot (if your BIOS is properly configured), ghost client will run from the PXE environ (called ngctdos.exe), the machines will clone, then apply the config and you're done! It's fairly automated too.

Skim the implementation guide it's very helpful.

Please mark as a solution if this helps.

Thanks for the response mrguitar;

My original plan was to use the Ghost Console to do just that, not PXE boot. I only went to PXE Booting because the console did not seem to do what I needed done, atleast not in an easy way. I have read thru all the guides that symantec offers which is why i'm here posting. All the guides seem to circumvent the actual steps to implement the setup, its like they all begin AFTER everything is already setup and configured and the configuring is what I need.

Here is the jyst of what i'm trying to accomplish, if I haven't already over-stated it:

I am building an imaging server to perform the following simple steps
1. create and upload and image to the server
2. be able to image a bare-metal machine fully automated (including joining domains, custom OU containers]
3. be able to dynamically name the systems according to my company's naming scheme

Thats pretty much it....so if you have any documentation or can point me in the direction of something that may help, I would greatly appreciate it. I realize my questions may seem elementary, however i'm at wits end with this software and i'm nothing short of someone holding my hand and walking me thru this.

Many Thanks

I found the 700+ page implementation guide to be quite helpful - but you're right it's not necessarily written to be a "how to."

Here are the steps I go through w/ an implementation.

1. Deploy the client & get connected with the console. You might be able to use the remote client install feature. Since you're in an active directory environ you can deploy this via a GPO. Or another favorite method of mine is to PXE boot to a boot image that runs the ghost client. The boot wizard will walk you through how to do this. This is a great method except the machines initially show up in the console as the MAC address. It can be easy to get them mixed up at first if you're joining a large number of PCs.

2. Make some groups. I break my groups up by VLAN - I know a lot of people break theirs up by department, or PC model. Just come up w/ a scheme and I recommend leaving all PCs in the default group.

3. Configurations. How you go about setting up the configurations will depend on how ...static of an environment you have. If you have a small office where things don't change much you can probably run a task w/  "Refresh configuration" and you'll be set. Since you keep mentioning "bare metal" that makes me think your environ might be a bit more dynamic than others. If you're constantly taking new hardware and setting it up there are several methods for applying a config to your machine. You might want to take a peak at the template configurations and build a good "normal" config - and adapt it as needed. or you can build a new config per machine. I don't know your situation, but you won't be able to automate everything if you need to input very specific things per machine. ...but stick w/ it - you'll figure out a good method.

btw. I've had mixed results using the active directory features that are provided in the configuration settings. I highly recommend grabbing M$'s command line utility from the admin pack called netdom.exe. It's a fantastic util that can be transferred & executed from the Console w/ all the switches.

4. put the pieces together and launch some tasks.

If you need more specific instructions I would suggest breaking it down and posting very specific questions. Big Bang llc & Binary Research still offer classroom training.

I'm not sure if this will help you, but I hope it does.
Cheers,

Thank you for your response mrguitar;

You have been quite helpful; and from your instructions, it appears that the console is pretty simple in terms of its functionality. essentially, from what i'm seeing, it should be as simple as adding a machine to the console, creating a specific task and running that task on whatever group you select....more or less.

My only concern is this, from what I have experienced with "tinkering" around with the console, you can only deply the client to machines that are already joined to the domain. This of course presents a whole new set of issues because if I need to join a brand new system to the domain just to install a client, then wipe it to install a new image, that defeats the whole purpose of automating the process via the console.

Essentially, I need to be able to crack open a brand new system out of the box, plug it up, turn it on and fully automate the imaging process. As I understand Ghosts' properties, I shouldn't have to "prep" the machine before I can image it or go around to each system to install a client just to wipe it, that defeats the whole purpose, so i'm sure there is something i'm missing. Its not necessarily that my network is that dynamic, I just want to be able to make changes fairly easily and push them out w/out having to reinvent the wheel to do it. IS there a simpler way to add machines to the console that doesn't require a script or task or machine prep, or client install?

Right now, I have the ghostcast setup on the server for PXE Boot using the the 3COM PXE Server and this works fine. I can PXE boot a brand new machine to the ghostcast server, pull down an image, join it to the domain and place the system into my custom OU containter all within mini-setup from the sysprep file. The only reason I am even laboring over the Ghost Console is because the MS sysprep file does not allow dynamic name scheming apparently as I have also researched the wildcard syntax for that, which does not work.

So because of that, I have to resort to other measures, and I was pointed in the direction of the ghost console and was advised that what i'm trying to do can be accomplished using the console, but it appears to be much more labor intensive, where the PXE boot process (once set up correctly) works flawlessly and very simple.

If the Ghost Console is unable to accomplish this, I would be very surprised and a little disappointed in the product as I have worked with Ghost in the past many times before with great results, but not on an enterprise platform. I would assume the process shouldn't be much different, however this is proving to be an arduous task.

Thanks for your response and suggestions mrguitar;

I have setup the PXE Boot to Ghost Client, still having issues with the configurations but I believe this headed in the direction I'm trying to go. I have been able to boot to the WinPE Preboot environment, but as the script is running, it halts before I get any menu options and receive the message:

Warning: MBR.BIN could not be created

The system then continues to normal boot. I still did not see the system in the Ghost Console but I seem to be on the right track, just need to configure a little more, but thank you very much for your help thus far, you have definitely given me some light in a very dark room.

It's good to know that some of my ranting has helped someone. :)

If it makes you feel any better, I get the same error message about the MBR. It doesn't seem to effect anything here. It's strange.

After your system boots into windows it will no longer showup in the console until you install the client. You'll probably want to add this to your image(s).

Cheers,