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info@bigbangllc.com
Big Bang, LLC
9851 S. 27th St.
Franklin, WI 53132 |
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Symantec Ghost 11.5 (version 1104 is included in the Symantec Ghost Solution
Suite 2.5) virtually eliminates the need to physically touch your client PCs.
If you are still using floppy disks or CDs to capture or deploy images, you are wasting time, money, and resources.
Symantec Ghost 11.5 can deploy operating systems, change or reset network settings, migrate users, and deploy software, to multiple PCs across your network, all from a single Ghost Console.
The Symantec Ghost package is comprised of several utilities and can be broken down into four basic groups: Drive Imaging, Ghost Utilities, the Ghost Console and Auto Install. Many organizations use the original DOS aspects of Ghost, but few use the entire package. Read below to see if, your organization is using Ghost to it fullest.
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Drive Imaging is the most basic and original function - copy a hard drive to another hard drive, or store a compressed image of the hard drive for later deployment to other
computers. Now, through the use of network multicasting, Symantec Ghost is able to
send a Microsoft Windows
2000 through Vista image (Ghost is not designed for Server level
operating systems) to multiple machines, across a network in minutes. As an example, a
Microsoft Windows XP image of 2GB, may be able to be deployed to 20 machines in less than 10 minutes. Of course the speed of the network and hardware may increase or decrease that. |
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Ghost Utilities includes the Ghost
Boot Wizards, Gdisk, Ghost Walker and Ghost Explorer. The boot wizards
creates a variety of DOS floppy boot disks for Ghost. Gdisk is a command line based DOS utility, which allows the users to create, hide and modify partitions. Ghost Walker is a DOS utility that changes the security ID (SID) for Microsoft Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista, thereby making each machine unique in the eyes of Active Directory. Ghost Explorer opens compressed images so the user can extract files.
With Fat 32 and now NTFS images, Ghost Explorer can even modify the images by adding, deleting or editing files.
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The Ghost Console is a Windows application that controls all your imaging needs remotely. However, it does much more than capturing and deploying images. Through the Ghost Console, you can reset network configurations for client PC's, such as machine name, IP address, and even join the clients to your domain. There is a User Migration function, which copies users, along with their data and settings from one PC, and deploys that data to another. User Migration tasks can also take that data and migrate it from one operating system to another. Upgrading from Windows XP to Vista? Not a problem.
Arriving in Ghost 8.0 (and avaialble in Ghost 11.5) was the hardware and software inventory
system. Using the Windows WMI feature, your can view and query all the
hardware and software installed on your clients. Want to know which
machines don't have the latest patch? Ghost can do that, and then help you
send the update. Finally, the Ghost Console can deploy and remove software
using Auto Install packages, giving you greater control over what is, and is not, installed on your PCs.
Starting with Symantec Ghost 7.5, and available through Ghost 11.5, the Ghost Console can now create a virtual partition on the client PCs, as needed. This virtual partition handles
all the imaging functions without anyone having to touch the PC, and is deleted when not in use. |
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The Auto Install (AI) software can be used independently of
Symantec Ghost. It is designed to capture the installation of software, and create a single executable package, which can then be deployed by CD, across a network, or through the Ghost Console. Installing Microsoft Office can be done in minutes, to multiple machines across a network, and should you then change versions, AI can completely remove the original
Microsoft Office installation, giving you a clean slate to work with, before installing the new version.
With a little creativity, Auto Install can be used to remotely delete software packages you did not install, like those applications your users downloaded! |
Please note: Symantec Ghost and Ghost are registered trademarks of
the Symantec Corp. Microsoft Office, Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, and XP are registered trademarks of
the Microsoft Corp.
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