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How to Use Ghostcast Server Portable with PXE Boot



Symantec Ghost is a well-known network clone client tool for data on hard drives, while Symantec GhostCast Server (GhostSrv for short) serves as its corresponding server-side program, which uses the network multicast technology, and implements one-to-many data transmission via Symantec Ghost. Suppose you need to install the same operating system to multiple computers with similar configurations, then using Symantec GhostCast Server+ Symantec Ghost will make the whole process become much simpler and more efficient.


What I need to understand is (please bare with me), having gone through the instructions on the above link what am I then able to do? Will I be able to produce a ghost boot disk which I can then use on my HP 800 G1 PC's so that they can then connect to my ghostcast server and be imaged from there?




Ghostcast Server Portable



One thing I would strongly recommend, and that is to archive the source files on a GOOD QUALITY portable hard disk or a server share, as optical media does not always last well. Buying a recognised make is definitely worth the extra $, as I have seen visible "holes" in the media surface of cheap disks. You might be able to get away with it on audio or video content, but data will definitely barf on read sooner or later where there are defects. Likewise cheap USB drives can have a higher soft error rate than WD or Seagate drives (for example).


Thankfully, I was able to equip our benches with a considerable number of HP ProCurve 2510-G 10/100/1000 managed L2 ethernet switches, some NetGear switches, and an HP tower server. A network was build to accommodate about 200 machines at once, usually 20 to a bench.


This setup worked fantastically, and really caught on- no more unscrewing machines, or queuing up for the duplicator, etc. However, the size of our Ghost images (even compressed!) was 20-60GB per image. This quickly blew past the small 170GB RAID that the server had.


If you want to protect unlimited computers within your company, you can pick AOMEI Backupper Technician. With the inbuilt AOMEI Image Deploy tool, you are also allowed to deploy/restore system image file on server-side computer to multiple client-side computers over network.


Ghost is marketed as an OS deployment solution. Its capture and deployment environment requires booting to a Windows PE environment. This can be accomplished by creating an ISO (to burn to a DVD) or a USB bootable disk, installed to a client as an automation folder or delivered by a pxe server. This provides an environment to perform offline system recovery or image creation. Ghost can mount a backup volume to recover individual files.


I am looking to implement (if possible/feasible) the ability to image a PC and Mac via our wireless network. Is this actually possible? I have read multiple documents that newer Macbook Airs can do this, but would that require having Multicasting on within our entire network? We have only have it on in 1 VLAN to minimize chatter on our network. Right now we have a PXE boot to gain access to a ghostcasting session that we instantiate. Is it possible to setup a wireless (netboot?) to PXEboot to ghostcasting?


The person who said it is possible didn't say they were using PXE boot. The only way that I can see it being done is by using a WinPE device like a flash drive or portable hard drive, but if that were the case, better to just put the image on a portable drive. This thread is 2 years old, but even in 2015, it is still not feasible to image over wireless.


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