Deployment and Imaging Group

Please find below the most frequently asked GSS 3.0 Install/Upgrade/Setup questions:

Q: Is there an in-place upgrade to DS 6.9 or is this going to require a wipe and re-install?
A: Yes, full in-place upgrade from DS 6.9 SP6.
 
Q: How do I access the console remotely from a different computer?
A: Copy the install files to the remote machine and using the component install option, you can install a console remotely on the additional computer.
 
Q: Is there a plan to develop a migration utility to help the transition from GSS 2.5 to GSS 3.0?
A: We looked into this but as the technologies are so dissimilar the effort was huge and as such was not feasible. I am desperate to support more GSS 2.5 use cases in GSS 3.x and I felt this was a better place to spend our resources.
 
Q: We had Windows server 2003 using Ris to handle Pxe boot. Is there a guide on how to setup a similar process so workstations can boot to pxe using Ghost 3.0 on windows 2012 R2 server?
A: Instructions on setting up PXE are included in the beta guide, reach out to us on the forum if this doesn’t cover your needs.
 
Q: Does GSS run separate from SMP server, or does it integrate? 
A: It is entirely separate.
 
Q: Does Ghost integrate with PCanywhere?  Or do I need GSS?
A: PCAnywhere is end of life, please see this announcement: http://www.symantec.com/connect/sites/default/file...
 
Q: will I be able to run the server and GSS from a virtual server?
A: Yes, we support VMware.
 
Q: Thin clients and thin install.  Where is there more information on this?    
A: Page 347 of the user guide  
 
Q: Do you recommend installing the GSS Console & SQL Database on different servers?  Will that give it better performance?
A: There will be a benefit if you have a large number of machines or you are scheduling jobs frequently. I would recommend trying on a single box first however as the hardware requirements to run the solution are relatively low.
 
Q: Can we run GSS 2.5 and 3.0 agent client together?    
A: We haven’t tested it but in theory it should work. You can only use one PXE infrastructure though.
 
Q: And will existing GSS 2.5 clients show up automatically in the new console?    
A: Unfortunately not, although you can remotely install the new agent the console.
 
Q: ­Can this product be installed on Windows 7 64 bit? Or does it need to be on Server 2012 r2?
A: ­Right now we have only certified on server operating systems but we're looking to spend the cycles to certify on desktop operating systems. We know from a resource perspective there wont be any problems but we anticipate there will be some technical issues
 
Q: How many clients can the SQL Express 2014 handle and support?
A: We don’t have a hard number for this yet, we are currently testing. We would be surprised if it could not handle 500 machines, but again, we need to test.
 
Q: How many machines can GSS 3.0 manage?
A: This is dependent on hardware and configuration but we usually consider the maximum to be 5000 machines, ideally this would be kept to under 3k