Hardware-independent imaging solves the problem of reducing the number of images you need to maintain.  But every time an operating system or piece of software is updated, you still need to update all of the base image files with those patches and updates.  Keeping things fresh could be an overwhelming task, if it weren’t for hot imaging. 

A system that lives to keep images fresh
With numerous hardware and software configurations to keep updated, IT can spend many hours updating, creating, and managing image files.  But instead of dedicating man hours to such a task, you can dedicate a centralized system to perform updates 24/7. The benefits of hot imaging are clear:

Hot imaging automatically refreshes images from a live reference machine prior to deploying them, thereby reducing the risk of stale, out-of-date images.  You have hands-on management of systems immediately because there is no wait time for locating patches and updates.

You can manage a live hot imaging system just like any other system, with client management software loaded to push and install patches and updates according to a schedule you specify, so the system always has the most current images and saves them on a shared file server. 

• The Ghost Solution Suite central management console, which resides on a different system, allows you to schedule regular deployments to all clients on the network to update images and keep them current.

If you’re unable to dedicate a system to hot imaging, you can create a virtual VMware disk (VMDK) image file and use it as the base image.  Simply run the virtual machine, update and patch it, and then use the VMDK file as a base image.  Ghost Solution Suite also supports additional file formats for base images, such as Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (BESR) and PowerQuest (PQi) disk image formats.

Keeping your images fresh is easy with Symantec Ghost Solution Suite and hot imaging technology.  Because image updating operates in the background automatically, you can focus on other network management tasks. 

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