Remote installation with RIS

[KyoAD]

Hi all,

I am working out a most efficient way to deploy OS images to the client machines in my office. I am just wondering if there are any good ways that you are using now which basically allows you to do the deployment centralised? Meaning that you can power on the W-O-L client machines and then the push the images from the server to them.

Thanks in advance!

 

[trusted]

I use Symantec Ghost to do centralized deployments of our images and it works great. I tried to go the RIS route, but because of the limited NIC support I was not to thrilled with it.

Ghost is just a superior product to RIS all around.

 

[ReddLefty]

I COMPLETELY disagree with trusted. Once you have a RIS setup, you won't want to live without it. A pain to setup? Yes, it's not easy, but the benefits outweight the trouble by a long shot. Limited support for network card? Only if you haven't tossed out your old PII-PIII's. Any new computer that comes with onboard NICs (which is almost all of them now) support UNDI (PXE 2.0).

The Ghost solution is still good, and faster than installing stuff by hand and is stil a widely used solution. Many people still use it, but if I have a choice between the RIS method and the Ghost method, I will pick RIS anyday.

And the final point why I chose RIS: It comes with Windows 2000 Server. No need to buy a GHOST license for every PC, so the cost is already covered by the purchasing of your server... in short, no additional costs.

So, if you have old systems with incompatible NICs you have two choices:

Use Ghost and pay 100$ for using it on the PC
or
Invest 40$ on a 3Com NIC that supports UNDI (PXE 2.0)..

Either way, it's cheaper to go with RIS.



"In space, nobody can hear you click..."

 

[KyoAD]

Thanks guys,

But is RIS able to power on the machines via WOL?? What i wanted to achieve is that i will want to do the deployment to the clients on the server end. Which means that i do not need to visit each client machines for the imaging.

Was thinking of using ghost with RIS.