Deployment Solution

Hi;
Was wondering if anyone could tell me how many computers could be imaged at one time with multicast? At one time I thought there was a practical limit, but can't seem to find anything.....

Thanks for your assistance.

Lee Ann Swanson
Connecting Point,
Watertown, SD

I don't know that there is a limit.  It depends on your network ultimately.  This would be one of those things that you would have to up the amount of computers being imaged and take note on the performance hits and the overall time.

The more clients you add, the longer the imaging process will take.  Also, acceptable is different for each of us.  If this is something that runs overnight (i.e. scheduled imaging task in a computer lab), time may not be as much of a concern as long as the total rebuild is done prior to the next morning's start time.  Otherwise, you may not want a particular imaging task to last longer than x minutes as you may have people waiting on you.

Ultimately, I think it is unlimited.  But for practicality's sake, it's going to vary from network to network based on equipment, individual requirements, and resources.

I don't know that there is a limit.  It depends on your network ultimately.  This would be one of those things that you would have to up the amount of computers being imaged and take note on the performance hits and the overall time.

The more clients you add, the longer the imaging process will take.  Also, acceptable is different for each of us.  If this is something that runs overnight (i.e. scheduled imaging task in a computer lab), time may not be as much of a concern as long as the total rebuild is done prior to the next morning's start time.  Otherwise, you may not want a particular imaging task to last longer than x minutes as you may have people waiting on you.

Ultimately, I think it is unlimited.  But for practicality's sake, it's going to vary from network to network based on equipment, individual requirements, and resources.

Thanks for the thoughts... maybe I should clarify.... have about 1400 laptops to image and was trying to come up with a scenario on how long all this would take. I've imaged 30+ computers that have good hardware specs and good switches on the network in about 1/2 hr w/ multicast. (I've actually done better than that with Ghost). If I don't multicast, it always takes longer with the more pcs you add, but multicasting seems pretty consistent at the numbers I've previously worked with... so didn't know if I could fireup a 100 computers and they would multicast just fine.....Thank you.

I think you could get by just fine with 100 computers.  I'm not 100% certain, but if you say you can image 30+ computers in half an hour, I wouldn't think that it would add too much time to do 100 computers.

There would be one concern I would have about multicasting.  If you are on a "production" network, multicasting can bring the network to it's knees as it is using all available bandwidth.

In regards to Ghost being faster when multicasting, it is possible as the two systems utilize multicast differently (ghost uses one box to be a ghostcast server, RDeploy will make several masters, each with a maximum amount of clients).  It also does matter what automation OS you are using.  WinPE vs. Linux vs. DOS.  Note DOS will always be a lot slower (does not take advantage of 32 bit or full potential of NIC).  I personally favor Linux as it boots a lot faster than WinPE.

I should also mention that it is possible to use Ghost in Altiris (if you have CMS, I believe you are covered license-wise).  I have not personally done this so I could not tell you how to do it and I have no plans to move that direction at this point. 

THis is for a school, and imaging won't be done until after school is out so bandwidth shouldn't be a problem, plus we isolate the imaging on it's own subnet. (I'm just covering my bases as we are bidding the project :-)....

Thank you for your thoughts! 

With 100 computers you will definitely end up with more than one master so that will use more bandwidth from the server. I personally have never had to do more than 30 computers at once and I believe I ended up for 2 masters. I don't see why 100 isn't doable as long as you have enough bandwidth to do it. Like bhawver said it will probably bring your network to its knees so you don't want to do it during work or school hours.

I agree.  Altiris depends on the disk throughput as well the network limitations or lack thereof.

That said, I typically try to isolate my imaging to classrooms or buildings in the Console so as not to confuse the server.  Once upon a time, there was a very unfortunate event at our campus in which all computers were sent a sysprep'd image which has typically worked.  But for whatever reason, the network appears to have gotten saturated, a hiccup, or some unforseen act of chaos as after the image completion process and during bootworks, it did not rename the computers to the previous computer name and we had to go by hand and track down and rename all machines.  From then on, we reduced our multicasting sessions.

Oy Vey!