IT Management Suite

  • 1.  Injecting Ghost image into Boot.wim

    Posted Nov 10, 2019 06:09 PM

    For serveral months I have been successful in "Ghosting over the Network" using the Automation Folder option within the 8.5 Deployment suite.  Even though I am running a 85-90% success rate, PXE Booting via a Package Server is still bound to the network latency and the distance between the Server and the Client.  So it  has suggested to produce a solution where the  entire 11Gb Boot.wim file is deployed to the clients Automation Folder - and then from there Send the Ghost command to reimage the machine locally.

    With this being said - I have the Boot.wim file from the Automation Folder.   I have the Captured Image stored on the Server.  But do not have the skills or the tools to merge the two and therefore I'm asking for a bit of hand-holding until I can successfully build a new  bootable image and reimage locally.

    The help I am looking for is:  Which tool is used or has been successfully used to merge together the ghosted image into the boot.wim file.  And of course the proper ghost command to execute the reimaging of the client locally.   As my new Boot.wim file will be 11GBs in size - sending it ahead of time is an obvious prereq which is OK - but the goal is - having the ability to re-execute the ghost command locally  & if all possible re-execute  the reimaging  command if it fails midstream and needs to be rerun.

    I have an older version of DISM available to me - the newer version DISM++ is a corrupted download package from China which is unusable unless someone has a reliable version. I have a deadline unfortunately so I need a mentor to guide me along the way.

    Any help and recommendations, suggestions, etc is encouraged

    Steve



  • 2.  RE: Injecting Ghost image into Boot.wim

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Nov 11, 2019 07:37 AM

    When you are using a Windows computer then it has already a built in DISM

    Thus just take the WIM file of the autoamtion folder. Example: DISM.exe /Mount-Wim /WimFile:C:\test\images\myimage.wim /index:1 /MountDir:C:\test\offline

    Then just copy the Ghost image files on a direcftory there, best if you create new one. (You will pretty much see the root of X drive after you have mounted)

    Then commit the changes and unmount the WIM

    Thats all that needs to done on the WIM

    The Ghost command itself it pretty easy

    ghost -sure -clone,MODE=restore,DST=1,SRC=%IMAGEPATH% -notrim

     

    But one part that I am not 100%, if automation folder loads like PXE.

    Meaning that if the WIM is loaded it is loaded into RAM.

    Thus if we add 11GB image inside the WIM + WinPe itself 300-400MB

    Then that means definetly the target client machine should have 12+GB of RAM, would be better if 16GB.

    Have not yet seen any people who load that large of WIM files into RAM, not sure how the client machine might behave.