Deployment products continued
Norton Ghost 2003 and symantec ghost corporate edition 7.5
Norton Ghost 2003 is an excellent package for desktop deployment, providing the ability to clone a system onto another disk.
The Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition 7.5 has even more features including:
“Remote Boot” Technology. By scanning the network, an IT administrator can use the Ghost Console to browse for and locate PCs on the network in order to deploy the Ghost client. Once installed, the Ghost client can on demand create a “virtual partition” which contains a fully functional Ghost boot environment thereby eliminating the need to visit the host PC with a boot diskette or deploy a physical boot partition.
Client initiated Tasks. These provide an optional secure method to perform console tasks at a workstation, which eliminates the need for an IT Administrator to return to the Ghost Server Console to perform a task, saves time, and enables an end user to “help themselves” by initiating cloning, application pull tasks, as well as user migrations from the workstation.
GhostCast Server. Provides three methods of Ghost image deployment, allowing an IT administrator to choose the method that best meets their bandwidth requirements:
- Multicast: The simultaneous deployment of one image to many computers
- Unicast: The deployment to a single client
- Subnet Targeted broadcast: Selective deployment based upon subnet grouping
GhostCast Throttle. Allows you to “throttle down” the multicast speed so you can reduce the amount of network bandwidth consumed during multicasting for improved network performance.
Ghost provides support for Windows 2000 Professional and Server, Windows XP Pro and Linux EXT2/3 file systems.
Ghost is very easy to use and is excellent for software deployment from five machines up to many thousand.
PowerDeploy suite 2.0
The PowerDeploy Suite from PowerQuest offers a complete solution to manage the lifecycle of your computer systems, including imaging and deployment, system migration, management of system updates, and system retirement.
The PowerDeploy Suite includes PowerQuest DeployCenter, PowerQuest Migration Manager, DataGone, and a centralised and secure Web interface console known as PowerQuest ControlCenter ST. From anywhere in the world you can create, schedule, and execute management tasks including imaging, deploying, restoring, and managing networked systems.
DeployCenter can deploy Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows NT Server machines around the organisation. It can even automatically convert a PDC (Primary Domain Controller) to a BDC (Backup Domain Controller) when you restore the image file. The Deploy Centre uses a variety of features to deploy software images:
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Virtual Floppy: Eliminates the need for boot disks by providing a DOS floppy boot environment on the client computer´s hard disk.
- DeltaDeploy: Automates software distribution, installation and configuration across the network and Internet. Note: DeltaDeploy does not support Windows XP/2000.
- PXE and Wake-On-LAN: Introduce new systems to the network without having to physically visit them through support for Intel´s Wired for Management technology.
- ImageCenter: Create, deploy, and restore exact images of your hard disk or partitions within minutes.
- SmartSector Technology: Copies only the sectors containing data thus minimising wasted disk space and preserving your system optimisations and Windows performance enhancements.
Migration Manager complements the deployment process by minimising the task of system migration. It also allows IT professionals to quickly and efficiently create a standard operating environment for your organisation. The results are reduced downtime, less impact on user productivity and the ability to easily migrate system, network and Windows settings. Objects that Migration Manager can transfer include the following:
- Desktop settings, including Active Desktop, colours, desktop icons, display, screen saver, and Wallpaper.
- Personality Settings, including printers (local and network), Start Menu, keyboard, mouse, and user profiles.
- Connectivity Settings, including computer description and name, DNS configuration, TCP/IP configuration, mapped drives and shared folders, and drives.
The DataGone application offers data removal so sensitive information is removed before a machine is moved/sold or redeployed. Data Gone offers a choice of five write methods for overwriting data, including:
- The NSA method of writing two random patterns followed by zero to each byte on the drive.
- The DoD Method, which is to write a random value, then its complement, then a different random value to each byte on the drive.
Data Gone runs in DOS mode to ensure no other operating system or program is running while DataGone executes.
ControlCenter ST is the secure, Web-based console that acts as the central point to intelligently create, schedule, and execute PC management tasks, including imaging, deploying, restoring, and managing networked systems. It provides Scheduled Task Execution to execute a task now or at a later time for any client or group of clients. You can also set these tasks to repeat at regular times such as daily, weekly, or monthly. ControlCenter ST provides information on the status of the execution of tasks on client systems, including automatic e-mail notification when the task is complete, as well as a history of scheduled tasks.
Other products
There are various other suites available that will provide a similar service to the ones we have looked at.
These include:
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Novell ZENworks for Desktops 4:
ZENWorks is Novell´s software management package which has a number of excellent features, including its ability to create a snapshot image, which is created by looking at the differences in registry entries and files installed before and after an application is installed on a system. This allows just those changes to be sent to any computer and the software is “installed”. - IBM Tivoli:
IBM´s Tivoli suite is designed to manage software on a very large scale. It can deploy a software update, check systems for viruses and security breaches, and even keep tabs on your applications.Tivoli has been around since 1989 and is a solid and dependable product for managing all your systems from the basic desktop PC, through all your Intel-based servers to the really big stuff like storage management and mini/mainframes.
