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Fallback Imaging I: Ghostcasting with Deployment Solution 7.5 

Sep 23, 2014 01:24 PM

There are various things that can cause issues with image deployment, many of which may require lengthy troubleshooting. Sometimes, time is not a luxury an imaging administrator can afford. A "tried and true" method is needed as an interim workaround. This article describes one way a Deployment Solution user may deploy images in such a situation.

The Deployment Solution installation provides a suite of imaging tools. Primarily, these are employed in the background by the console for remotely initiated imaging operations. Many who now use Deployment Solution will be familiar with the Ghost. Ghost has been around for years as a backup and deployment tool, and the newest version of the Ghost executable is used by Deployment Solution.

The Ghostcast Server is a lightweight but powerful companion to the Ghost executables that can be used for multicast image deployment to a large number of machines. The Ghostcast Server is typically ran on the machine where the images are located. A session is created and named, and then is set to a ready state to accept clients. Client machines are the  booted with boot media containing the Ghost executable to run in a preboot environment. After machines are booted, they are told to join the multicast session. Once all participating clients are joined, the session is started at the Ghostcast Server. The Ghostcast Server then broadcasts the image file to the joined clients.

Prerequisite:

You will need a method to boot the client machine(s) into a Pre-OS environment. I recommend these steps for creating boot media. These instructions assume that you have boot media created with those instructions.

Steps:

1. On the Symantec Management Platform server, browse to \Program Files\Altiris\Deployment\Imaging\ghost\x86. Right-click GhostSrv.exe and choose Send To > Desktop (create shortcut). This is for ease of access.

Location_2.JPG

2. Doubleclick the GhostSrv.exe shortcut to start it, and provide a Session Name. The example below specifies the session name as "1".

GC_Server.JPG

3. Choose Restore Image, then browse to the *.GHO image file. The above example specifies an image named "MyImge.GHO".

4. Click Accept Clients. The Ghostcast Server is now in a ready and waiting state.

accept_clients.JPG

5. Boot client machines to automation. From the X: command prompt, run the following:

Ghost32.exe (if the boot media is 64bit, use Ghost64.exe instead)

CMD_Ghost32.JPG

6. When Ghost launches, choose Ghostcast > Multicast. Then type in the Session Name (from #2 above) and click OK, then follow remaining prompts.

gc_mc.JPG

7. Repeat steps #5-6 for each machine to be in the multicast session.

8. Click Send on the Ghostcast Server.

send_image.JPG

This will allow you to deploy images via a multicast session to a group of machines. It is intended as a backup method when a critical deployment has been delayed and/or the Symantec Management Platform is having issues.

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