The Ghost Solution Suite 3 is a best in class imaging suite aimed at small- to medium-sized organizations. The suite offers a variety of options for image capture and deploy operations, both for scale and for degree of endpoint management. This guide is meant to provide you with an explanation of these features & assist you in planning an implementation in your environment.
There are two installation options for Ghost Solution Suite 3: the Ghost Standard Tools installation and the Ghost Console installation. While the core functionality of Ghost for imaging and deployment are present in both, how they accomplish that is different.
Ghost Standard Tools
The Ghost Standard Tools installation are designed for imaging administrators whose only need is to create and deploy disk images, and does not need to manage machines through their life cycle. In addition to the core executables, Ghost Standard Tools includes the enhanced version of the Boot Disk Creator (BDC Plus). The BDC Plus is a tool that creates boot media for Ghost using WinPE (also Linux) and a library of preboot device drivers that it manages. The BDC Plus included in the Ghost Standard Tools is more robust than the basic Boot Disk Creator (BDC) in the Ghost Console installation due to the fact that WinPE version 2.x through 4 can be imported in addition to WinPE 5.1. As a result, this gives an imaging administrator more options when dealing with legacy hardware. Imaging with Ghost Standard Tools is done with boot media, usually bootable USB thumb drives or CDs/DVDs. The process always involves booting the machine with a boot disk, requiring physical access to the machine. At that point images may be created or deployed over a network via Ghostcasting or a mapped drive share, or to and from a USB-connected storage drive. The Ghostcasting method allows multicasting to a large number of machines, and is one of the most common image deployment methods used today.
The limitations of a Ghost Standard Tools installation is that it does require physical access to the machines to be imaged, unlike the Ghost Console. As a result, this is best implemented in an environment where an imaging administrator only needs to use Ghost for initial deployment and infrequent reimaging of machines. The Ghost Standard Tools does not offer tools for managing machines outside of image creation and deployment, does not require a database, and does not use an administrative console.
Ghost Console
The Ghost Console installation is for an imaging administrator to manage machines remotely. It is a robust solution that tracks and issues jobs to machines through use of an agent, a small piece of software that runs on each client machine. Through this agent, the console user will be able to create and deploy images without physical intervention on the machine. Operations that require booting into a preboot environment will reboot the machine via PXE or Automation Folders once a job is assigned to it. Additionally, console jobs can be complex operations that have tasks run before, after, or independent of, imaging. Imaging with the Ghost Console is typically done via jobs created in the console and executed remotely. Jobs can be created on the fly, or a library of jobs may be created and employed when needed. In addition to imaging, jobs can execute a variety of command both in the production operating system, or in a preboot environment. This offers an imaging administrator a great deal of versatilty in management of endpoints.
As with the Ghost Standard Tools above, the Ghost Console does have a Boot Disk Creator (BDC). Though not as robust as the BDC Plus installed with Standard Tools, it is capable of creating boot media for machines without clients, even boot media that connects the machine to the console as a client. It supports the creation of boot media with both Linux and WinPE 5.1, and like the BDC Plus, manages a library of preboot device drivers. The primary difference between this and the BDC Plus is that it does not allow the import of earlier versions on WinPE, though most users do not need legacy ADK preboot environments.
The primary drawbacks to the Ghost Console are that it requires more resources, necessitates the installation of a piece of software on all machines to be managed, and requires more training to use. The Ghost Console uses a SQL database for storage of configuration information, though the SQL Server may be on the same machine and our installer gives the option to install SQL during the Ghost installation. Clients must be installed on machines to be managed, but the installation of the client may be initiated remotely from the console. In order to use PXE as a default boot option, greater knowledge of networking may be required for implementing the software.
Planning For Your Environment
When making a plan for implementing Ghost in your environment, it is recommended that you weigh your organization's needs and available resources. A full Ghost Console install works best when there is a dedicated imaging administrator with domain admin rights, a background in networking, and access to test machines. Use of the Ghost Console implies an administrative role in relation to the machines the console manages. In organizations where no dedicated imaging administrator exists, where those performing the imaging are not expected to have administrative oversight over imaged machines, or where machines are intended to be distributed outside the organization. If this is a reflection of your organization's imaging needs, please consider Ghost Standard Tools.
It is worth noting that the installation of Ghost Standard Tools and the Ghost Console are not mutually exclusive; both may be installed on the same machine concurrently, and, though this is not ideal, it does allow an imaging administrator to start with Ghost Standard Tools, with its lower cost of implementation in time and resources, and later move to the Ghost Console. The most important thing to know is that the Ghost Standard Tools Boot Disk Creator Plus and the Ghost Console's Boot Disk Creator have different driver libraries due to differing installation locations.
Installation & Configuration
Ghost Standard Tools & the Ghost Console have separate installers. Their release notes, user guides, & training videos may be found here. After installation, however, the first thing that should be done is to import the Preboot Operating Systems. You will find instructions for that here:
How To Import Preboot Operating Systems Into Ghost Solution Suite 3 (Standard Tools Installation)
How To Import Preboot Operating Systems Into Ghost Solution Suite 3 (Console Installation)
Basic Imaging
The most basic methods of imaging with either installation type are legacy methods which utilize boot media created with Ghost Standard Tools' BDC Plus or the Ghost Console's BDC. These documents will detail this process.
1. Starting Point: Creating Boot Media For Legacy Ghostcasting With Ghost Solution Suite 3
2. Imaging methods utilizing boot media:
- USB-connected Imaging: In this model, boot media is used to boot the machine to take an image from or deploy an image to. The image is either created to or deployed from a USB-connected external drive. This method has the advantage of avoiding use of a network, but only allows image deployment for a single machine at a time.
- Mapped Drive Imaging: This model uses a network share as the source or destination for an image file.
- Ghostcasting (for Image Creation or Image Deployment): The Ghostcasting method utilizes another machine to run the Ghostcast Server, which creates a session for the machine or machines to connect to. With the Ghostcast Server, you can run a multicast session for deploying to many machines without overburdening your network.
Console-based Imaging
Imaging via the Ghost Console requires a more thorough walkthrough than is feasible in a single article. Console training may be found in this documentation.