Ghost Solution Suite

What is the license purchasing requirement for Ghost? Do I need to buy licenses for all the computers currently being imaged, or licenses for all computers that will ever use Ghost in my organization?

All machines that will run as a result of using ghost.  So if you do 10 machines at a time and then do that for 10 batches to give you a total of 100 machines created as a result of ghost you would need 100 licenses.   

If these are then reloaded each Friday night because they are in a lab or some thing and you reload them all again you don't need more license because the 100 licenses are for these 100 machines.    You could reload them multiple times a day and it would not grow your need to license, only if you increase your machine count. 

One common missunderstanding is that if you only do 10 machines at a time you only need 10 licenses but this is not the case.  

hope that helps.

Exactly what I needed to know. Thank you.

If you're from an educational institute as your username suggests, then do be aware that Symantec runs special educational licensing programs such as the Academic Program and the Academic Subscription Program.

As with commercial enterprise licensing, this is done in volume bands; at the sale of a school district or university, the volume discount can be very substantial indeed (over and above the basic educational discount compared to commercial licenses) so in any educational setting you should be talking to Symantec's Enterprise Sales staff to ensure that you're getting the right kind of volume pricing - furthermore, if your organization is part of a larger organization like a university or school district, there may well already be either a bulk license in place elsewhere in the larger organization (something that the sales people may be able to help you discover - we all know that in large organizations, finding out about things often isn't as easy as it should be) or there could at least be another existing licensee you can team up with to negotiate a better volume discount.

This is great info, thanks, but I have a question about licensing.  How does the Solution Suite handle activation? I created a dual boot image with Windows 7 on each partition for day and night classes, and activated both installations.  When I download that image to the classroom, all of the installations are asking for activation and of course, Microsoft's online activation isn't working. Is there a way to handle Windows 7 activations?

Thanks.

Ghost Solution Suite does not handle operating system activation, it just deploys the operating system.

If you use Sysprep, this automatically wipes any existing activation and licensing information, so if you are using a Volume License of Windows 7, it will still need activation after deployment.

You have not indicated whether you are using KMS or MAK licensing for Windows 7. If you have a classroom of machines that are being reimaged on a regular basis, I would suggest having a KMS solution would offer the most efficient solution, as the KMS server can then hand out licenses on an as-needed basis.

Symantec licensing or Microsoft licensing?   If you are asking about microsoft licensing you should open a new thread rathern than posting to this one. 

The console licensing is tracked by clients that are installed and that the console database is aware of.   If you retire a machine then you will also need to delete the records in the console to free up the console license.

Cheers.

That's really what I wanted to know, how the Solution Suite handles licenses. And from what you told me, Sysprep will wipe out the activation, so each machine will have to be activated. I did not use Sysprep this time, I just activated Windows 7 in the image then Ghosted it.  Apparently that works the same because all of the machines are saying they need to be activated, but I get an error when I try to activate online, 0x80072F8F, which says a security error occurred. I am using an MAK license.That might be a Microsoft question. I never had this problem with Windows XP.

I believe that Windows is complaining because the same info was duplicated and has been reporting back to the Microsoft mother ship.  Each machine would need it's own license and they are coming up all with the same license.  

Ed's suggestions are on track.

cheers.

Thanks, but I'm using a MAK license, so they will all have the same license anyway.  After more experimentation, what I found was I can activate them through the automated phone line, and if I move a machine to where I can get a direct connection out without going through our firewall and filter, I am able to activate online. I was getting various errors, from security error to DNS error to bad file name (?).

Thanks for everyone's help on this issue.

As far as I am aware, you need a separate MAK license for each machine to comply with Microsoft licensing conditions. Some keys allow multiple activations (eg MSDN editions) but sooner or later Microsoft will pick up that one key is being continuously re-activated and may come knock on your door. If you rebuild these machines on a regular basis, it may be preferable to have a hidden partition on each machine's hard disk to which you can save an image of your activated machine, and which you can subsequently restore without having to reactivate the image as you would not need to run Sysprep and you would not be changing the hardware - either of which can cause the system to need re-activation.

If you plan to do this, and your machines are part of a domain, then you may wish to look for a key called "DisablePasswordChange" under HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet and set it to 1. This stops the operating system changing its machine password on the domain server every 7 days and so when you restore the image several weeks later, it should still be part of the domain.

I am using the MSDN Academic Alliance edition of MAK license, They told me it was a multiple access license that I could use for loading the classroom computers.  And I should not be imaging these machines real often, but I certainly will check out your other suggestions, thank you very much.

but thank you for your additional comments. I will certainly look into the things you suggested.