Ghost Solution Suite

Our company has apparently had GSS for a while, but since the person who knew more about using it left, no one has had time to learn all the functions. There are a couple of ways we use it, but far from it's capabilities. Mostly we have a bare bones base image that we can put on a new system for a new employee to use. I personally, after reading some information here, think that it could have been created better and would be a lot easier to use with just a little work.

As the newbie on the team, I've been tasked with learning the program and how we can best utilize it. I've used imaging software at previoius jobs, but I've always been the one deploying created images, not setting them up. Also, this is my first time using Symantec for this.

From all the reading, I'm pretty comfortable with the steps I should follow to make our base image easier to use, no matter what machine it is going on. I'm also pretty confident in using the Automated Install packages to send out with the Console to somewhat automate setting up a new pc for specific user needs.

Where I'm hitting a stumbling block....upgrading users to new computers. Basically what I need to do is probably pretty simple. We have a lot of users with older Optiplex 280s and new 780s that we are upgrading them to. So far, the other tech has been doing most of this manually by putting our base image on the new machine and installing the users programs one by one and then moving over documents, shortcuts, ect. from the old machine. It's a lot of work. I'd like to do an image of the user's machine and dump it onto the new computer, taking advantage of DeployAnywhere to overcome the hardware differences. I'd like to image the machine, put the image on the new machine overnight and give the new system to the user in the morning. Easy right?

So, what would be the best steps to use to do this? Do I need to run sysprep on the old machine as part of the task? Right now we are setting the hard drive to "legacy" in BIOS to keep from getting the BSOD, but I'd like to change that so we have the correct Mass Storage Controllers as part of the setup. I'm just not quite sure where to put that information. Any other pitfalls I should consider?

Thanks in advance for the help!

I can't speak much to the practical aspects of trying to do DeployAnywhere imaging of these particular two machine models because that's really driven by the plethora of design faults and driver issues associated with the Optiplex line; no doubt others can speak more to that.

However, there's a user migration system built into Ghost Solution Suite built around creating a package of settings and files from the original machine and transferring it to the new one. What you see in the GSS console under "Configurations/User Migration Templates" is based on something created around Ghost 8.0 using AutoInstall, but from GSS 2.0 onwards this was powered by a different product sold separately for a short time as Symantec User Migration.

[ I don't recall off the top of my head whether all of the components from the standalone SUM are available in the GSS 2.5 installer or not, as what's visible in the GSS console GUI is a subset of what SUM can do. In GSS 2.0 there was a separate installer launched from the CD splash page to get the standalone SUM product bits on top of the subset visible through the console but I don't recall whether that was left in for GSS 2.5 or not. ]

With SUM it could be run through the console (using the slightly less flexible package template mechanism exposed there), or the standalone SUM package builder could be run to build a package which could be deployed through the console onto the new machines. Either way, using SUM you won't have to deal with all the various unique problems of the existing Optiplexes since the SUM capture process just runs in the existing operating system.

One small quirk of the console integration in SUM is that user package capture tasks build the entire captured package on the client machine, and then move it to the GSS server, so the machines do need enough free disk space to hold the package during that process. Otherwise there shouldn't be too much to choose between console-managed and standalone SUM migration.

[ Bonus history: Symante User Migration was built out of a product originally called "The Van", the maker of which had failed. During the planning for GSS 2.0, it was identified as important to completely replace the AutoInstall-based user migration system in order to enable good XP->Vista migration, and so the source code for The Van was basically a source-code-only acquisition from the liquidators. The Ghost team then did a lot of work to expand that base into what was then dubbed SUM and then merged into the Solution Suite console replacing the older system. ]

While in the short term it's attractive to just image, depending on what your organization's status is with respect to migration away from Windows XP it may well be a good idea explore this process instead so that if you do need to do any XP->Win7 work in future the basics are all in place.

I plan to use the User Migration for when we finally do upgrade to Win7 in 8-15 months. (No one wants to get firm on a timeline for that around here just yet. They want to get the servers all upgraded first and that's going to be a bit of an ordeal, but not my project!)

For now, I just have a handful of users with somewhat complicated applications and settings. I just really want to get their image onto one of the new PCs for now, so I don't have to reinstall all the programs and configurations they have for those. Before those users are able to upgrade to Win7, there's going to have to be a lot of discussion on compatibility of those programs and they may need to migrate to a different application.

So yes, this is a short term solution I need. Migrating a user's settings is great, but doesn't work with all of our programs unfortunately.

I cant speak for GSS user migration; however, PCT has a2i files for application migration and it also allows you to create your own a2i files for applications that we have not supplied one for.

PCT 6.8.1066 is the latest release and supports Office 2010 as well as Windows 7 64bit.

SK

The underlying challenge is to collect all the necessary drivers for your new hardware before you start trying to do anything with Deploy Anywhere.

If you have a working build on the new hardware, you can capture a lot of useful information using the utility from here:  https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/utility-assist-identifying-plug-and-play-drivers

Run this on your O/S and it will generate a text file that lists all the PNP IDs in your system, plus the associated INF and driver information.  You can then collect all the required drivers for the target hardware and operating system, ensuring that each driver set includes an INF SYS and maybe CAT and DLL file. The INF file should include the PNP ID of the related device in your target machine.

Then you can integrate these drivers into DA as part of the image you have taken from existing hardware, and try a deployment to the new platform and see if it all works.

Some things I've found along the way with my attempt.

I tested and played with a couple of spare 280s and 780s I had. Put a base image of ours on the 280 and made a few modifications to it. I ran the utility  SysPrep Driver Scanner to make sure all the drivers for both machines were present on the system. I customized a Sysprep.ini to build mass storage drivers and a few other things, like having the mini-setup ask for the computer name.  I ran an image capture with Sysprep of the 280.

After that, I did a DeployAnwhere clone task to push the image to a 780, Other than the mouse and keyboard not working initially (they were running through a switch and DeployAnywhere didn't like that too much), the transfer was smooth and relatively painless. No blue screens after I figured out to make sure to have all the correct drivers in place.

Currently doing the same with an image I took of one of the users last night. We'll see how this goes.