Forum Home
Press F1
 
Thread ID: 108824 2010-04-13 03:45:00 Ghosting solution across network for 10 machines (SMB) Chilling_Silence (9) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
876064 2010-04-13 03:45:00 Hi all,

Ive got a small business I'm supporting with approx 10 machines.

What we have is 10 machines currently using a central file-server for all their documents, collaboration files, and a repo for their source code for the application they're writing.

We've then got that rsync'ing nightly to an offsite fileserver.

What they're after is a way to (monthly - manually) ghost each machine to an independent Seagate NAS device that they have (Shares are windows file shares), but we're not sure on the best software do use for this.

Ideally cheap / free is best, but network backups of the entire system image are what's crucial. Compression would be ideal too.

They've got a mix of Win7 Home Premium and WinXP Pro.

Any thoughts / comments appreciated :)

Cheers


Chill.
Chilling_Silence (9)
876065 2010-04-13 04:06:00 I would look at ShadowProtect Desktop Edition.
If you buy 10 licenses you will get a bit of a discount.
It does full system images and incrementals and can do these every 15 mins if you want it to. It has compression and you can also encrypt the images.

I'm going to some sales/technical training on it on the 26th April, as they are about to release a new verion, if you want to come along?
CYaBro (73)
876066 2010-04-13 04:07:00 Upgrade the XP pc's to 7 and use group policy to script scheduled imaging to file server!

Another thought, how about WHS, that does it automatically and only storage 1 copy of any file!
SolMiester (139)
876067 2010-04-13 04:39:00 Unsure about WHS, I think they have 11 + a laptop, and WHS supports 10 IIRC.

They've requested I get them something up and running by the end of next week, and I'm going to visit them tomorrow, to sort out several other issues, but the system-imaging may have to wait.

Upgrading to Win7 Pro is another solution I've mentioned to them, though some staff must stay with XP due to supporting old hardware dongles that they can't get to work in XP Mode, so that's not a total solution unfortunately, though I've thought about it.

I've heard the name "Acronis" tossed around a lot, but never used it. Suitable for what I'm after potentially?
Chilling_Silence (9)
876068 2010-04-13 07:42:00 Sounds like Symantec Backup Exec Recovery will do the job for you. I use it to backup my primary PC to 2 windows server 2003 network shares, 1 for weekly backups and 1 for monthly backups.

You can schedule when the data gets backed up and also which data to back and do a complete image of a machine.

The thing I like about this application is you can migrate images across hardware platforms... in my experience the minimum you need is the storage/disk controller for the new platform and once the image has been successfully migrated you can then install all the other new device drivers.

Probably pricier than you may want but it can't be beaten for effectiveness and ease of use. Another handy thing about it is you can remotely deploy the backup agent to computers on a network.

cheers,
chiefnz (545)
876069 2010-04-13 08:01:00 Don't the seagate black armor NAS drives come with 10 copies of Acronis True Image? My work uses Kaseya so we can rent enterprise copies of Acronis TrueImage to out clients. I've found it to be really good. Greven (91)
876070 2010-04-13 10:25:00 Seagate disk wizard is their version of Acronis true image
www.seagate.com
I have used it successfully across my home network to create images and restore
them. (to and from my freenas server)
If you are not using a seagate drive you can use the tech over-ride when it complains about no seagate or maxtor drive present
press Alt, t, o, all together and it will continue.
KarameaDave (15222)
876071 2010-04-13 11:43:00 I use g4u (www.feyrer.de) for my imaging. I have used it for some years now for a classroom of 16 PCs with as many as 3 OSs on the hard disk (mixtures of MS Windows and Linux). johnd (85)
876072 2010-04-13 13:11:00 That's a good question, it may have come with software? I should look into that.

Thanks for all the replies thus far, some interesting stuff to think about.

That Symantec software, is that the progression of Ghost Corporate? I used that back in the day, it was freakin cool!
Chilling_Silence (9)
876073 2010-04-13 20:54:00 Not too sure Chill? I don't think so as with Ghost you cannot migrate images across hardware platforms... the OS tends to BSOD due to driver issues.

Cheers,
chiefnz (545)
1 2