Ghost Solution Suite

Hello community,

Looking for guidance, limitations, and documenation outlining the VMWare virtualization of GSS 2.5.1

We are currently running GSS 2.0 consoles on physical Windows XP SP2 boxes and would like explore the options of:

1. Doing a P2V of the physical Windows XP box and then upgrading the virtual to 2.5.1

or

2. Starting with a clean Win7 or Win2008 or Win2008 R2 vm (whichever is most preferred) and then installing GSS 2.5.1

or

Any other recommended scenarios.

Looking forward to as many recommendations as possible.

Thanks in advance for your guidance\input

Are you currently piloting VMWare (ESX ??) as a virtual hosting platform, or are you already in production?

Having worked in an entirely virtual development environment back in 2005, (hosted on VMWare ESX), I can attest to the simplicity and flexibility of the virtual solution. The only notable problems occurred when DNS misbehaved.

I would personally suggest a path where you set up a new platform (server or workstation) and install the latest version of GSS, rather than trying to migrate an older existing version and then upgrade. You can then set up one or more virtual desktops and test client deployment and overall performance without touching the production environment. Once you are happy that it is all working correctly, you can move the new platform into your production environment and migrate a few machines to pilot the process, then if all is still well, migrate the remainder of the target machine inventory.  This leaves you a fall-back position if anything emerges during pilot testing.

As to the actual platform to host the latest version of GSS, if you are finding that XP is meeting your current needs then Windows 7 may prove a better choice than Server 2008 or 2008R2 as it needs somewhat less resources than the server operating systems. How big a machine base are you servicing?

EdT....we meet again.

We are running ESX already.  I pretty much agree with your assessment and recommendation of implementing a new build.

I guess what I am looking for is any known issues with the virtualization of GSS....occassionally I have Goggled it up and find folks who have attempted and failed due to one reason or another.  So I got to thinking, is this even supported by Symantec?

Furthermore, we have over 40 disparate sites at which we have a consoles due to bandwidth limitations as well as mutlicasting limitations.

I also agree with your recommendation of the Win7 versus 2008...just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing out on the big picture if there were any significant benefits to running the GSS on server rather than workstation.

Hoping someone else who has virtualized (or not) the GSS will join in on the conversation and point out the success or failures of the process.

Thanks

I have it in my test network on an ESX server.  I had some PXE issues at first but got that resolved eventulaly. One concern is swamping your VM ware server and consuming massive ammounts of harddrive access and network access that may cause other VM guests to perform slower while using ghost.  (not that big of a concern if you have a healthy server)

I am on board with EdT's suggestions.   no reason for server OS; workstation would have less overhead. 

I think their official response is that it hasn't been tested and is not supported.   http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH110404&locale=en_US

cheers

As it happens, and as you'd expect, the GSS developers used VMWare Workstation extensively themselves (both for the cloning executable, and for the management platform). Unsurprisingly therefore, the basics of the suite tend to just work when run on a host or guest. However, VMWare can (and by rights, they are entitled to) make any engineering change they like to their product.

What you won't find is any statement to the effect that "third-party technology X is supported", largely because of customers with support contracts - who would sometimes concoct scenarios involving Ghost and third-party programs that were totally logically impossible, and would vigorously demand because they have a support contract whatever scenario they concocted was something WE HAD TO MAKE WORK, even if it couldn't.

That's not an exaggeration; from the development side, saying "X is supported" has nothing whatsoever to do with "X works". X may work perfectly, and be known and QA'd to work perfectly; that's not the same thing as legal contractual obligations to make things work if they ever stop working, which is what a formal statement of support tends to be interpreted as, and what customers who purchase support contracts do believe their contract entitles them to.

To take just one example: Ghost is willing to use the VMDK disk format as a source and destination. However, VMWare do not (or at least, did not) publish the specifications for the VMDK format as used by ESX, only that used by VMWare Workstation. The two turn out (surprise, surprise) to be very different. You may like to imagine what a jolly time was had by all as a consequence.

To my knowledge, other than the above VMDK format issue I don't recall any specific blocking issues with GSS, server or client, running on any edition of VMWare or for that matter any edition of VirtualBox or Microsoft Virtual Server from GSS 2.5 onwards; I do recall an issue with emulated network hardware in a version of Virtual Server, but after extensive testing against the physical hardware which the VM environment was supposed to be emulating that was resolved by Microsoft.

Ultimately though, questions of the form "is this supported" are tricky, because of the intersection with legal obligations in support contracts (much as Symantec employees are enjoined to refrain from disclosing *any* unannounced aspects of future releases to customers because of SEC regulations). Ultimately it's up to you to try the specific configuration you have in mind and test it; if a pilot trial doesn't work, then Symantec *will* be behind you, and will make every effort to ensure that things do work (as, in my experience, do the other vendors, such as Microsoft and VMWare - resolving problems in virtualization often involve multiple vendors attacking an issue on different fronts), and the 99.9% likelihood is that it all works fine. The 0.1% is where things get hard, and blanket guarantees aren't easy to give.