Norton Ghost, DHCP

First question, one I'm not sure anyone will be able to answer without knowledge of Norton Ghost... but, when I have several computers hooked up to a switch... which is in turn hooked up to the main network... and I push a Ghost image to one or more computers from the Ghostcast server(win2kpro).... it brings the entire 800 computer network to its knees!!

So if anyone knows what that is about some help would be great.

My temporary solution is to just run a DHCP server on the Ghostcast server computer (individual static ip addresses on the ghost bootdisks would not be fun!) so I do not have to be connected to the main network at all. However, the only thing I could find that worked was this freeware dhcp turbo or something that could only dish out 5 ip's at a time.

So if someone knows what to do about the first problem that would be nice, but if not please tell me a better way to get a dhcp server going!

well at least i figured out the reason... when you multicast... it just sends all the packets to everyone... the other option is unicast... but that only does one specific computer at a time... and that is so much slower than doing several at once.

still don't know the solution.

depending on how the network is setup, you could have a ghost server setup on the LAN segment that you are ghosting on that way it doesn't send the packets to all the machines example setup 192.168.0.X as the clients you want to ghost to with the ghsot server 192.168.0.1 and the rest of your netowrk 192.168.1.X of cource withthe proper subnet.. this should stop the packets from going to all the machines that are not being ghosted... not sure of how it is physicaly hook up on your netowrk, hope this helps

ok how would i force all these computers into a certain range of Ip's like that though? is there any way to limit the traffic to JUST all the computers connected to this switch regardless of ip's? how does the subnet fit in to that? sorry i am pretty much a networking newb here.

well you have to remember that your sending atleast 1-2 gigs of data to each computer you are pushing the image to, so regsardless of the conncetions it will very much hamper your network performance when doing several at once. Now I have a question. is your entire network static addresses and you want DHCP for it? or what? cause the easiest way would be upgrade the ghostcast server (win2kpro) to win2k server and run DHCP from that. not sure why you want it but thats the fastest way I can think of.

(but I would recommend the following)
But the way I always did it was sorta like what Frumpco said. The ghost image server ran with a seperate connection off it to a switch that I alone used to ghost machines off of, could do about 5-7 at a time before I noticed a considerable slow down in copy speeds (it took about 20-30 minutes per 5-7 machienes depending on how soon after another I started the image copy). And I did use a boot disk rather than pushing from the server. and I had created the disk to run it all automatically, so you just put in the disk, turn on the computer and go to the next one. Then multi disks to make sure the addresses/names assigned to the computers were unique and that was it. The names were changed later anyways to match that of the user it will be deployed to.

*edit* edited for grammer/typos

*edit* more questions.

are the computers you are trying to ghost in one physical location or are they spread out in the office? If thats the case the subnet thing may be more of a headache than a releif, espeically if you are new to it (creating custom subnets/masks is a complete pain in the a**) Since if they were all in one physical location (ie, one room or something) then it would be easier to connect them all to a completely seperate network and ghost them as mentioned above. otherwise, there doesnt seem to be too much you can do about it. Also, creating seperate subnets wont help too much because all the traffic still goes through the same hardware. even though the packets may be kept off other networks, the switches still must process ALL the packets as it was before. Might improve the problem a little, but not as much as you could with other solutionds

they are all in the same room, same switch.

the reason for the dhcp thing is so we don't have to make custom boot disks with all the ip's preset and such.

so basically your suggestion is to make bootdisks with static IP's all in a certain range and have the ghost server only send to computers in that range?

We do have the disks all setup to work automatically like yours... its quite nice.

btw, it only takes about 9 minutes to do 6 for me.

Demont said:

so basically your suggestion is to make bootdisks with static IP's all in a certain range and have the ghost server only send to computers in that range?

Click to expand...

and if so, how do i do it?

Demont said:

btw, it only takes about 9 minutes to do 6 for me.

Click to expand...

Thats assuming I'm doing other stuff in between setting up computers

and if so, how do i do it?

Click to expand...

Im actualy not suggesting static IPs, Im suggesting you do DHCP for the computers you are ghosting and make a seperate connection/netowrk for just the ghost server and the computers you wish to ghost. Meaning to physically seperate all ghost traffic from your network. The ghost boot disks /should/ have a setting to tell the computer what its name is and what IP address to use (if any). just simply make a couple different disks with different names and such, then alternate them across machines. and make sure that you change them to what they should be before they go into circulation (such as, set to DHCP or a specific static IP, and change the computer name) this will allow you to do multiple ones at once without the risk of conflicts.

*edit*
However, DHCP would require one that could do just that, so you may need to find a program to do that or just upgrade to server OS. or you can configure it to use the DHCP of your network (if there is dhcp to begin with) and configure the 2k machine to get addresses for anyone connected to it (acting like a gateway) if you enable internet connection sharing on the 2k machine, it will do DHCP for clients connecting to it., just set thegateway for the clients as the 2k machine and it should assign them internal addresses. which will avoid the IP conflict, but you still have the problem with the computername. and the last version I used of Norton Ghost was like 5.2 so I dont know if they have fixed that or not but in 5.2 and earlier you had to have a seperate disk for each different computer name you wanted to use. and it was required otherwise you couldnt have more than one machine running at a time while ghosting. the ghosting would fail. Though again I dont know if that was fixed or not but it proboably wasn't/.
*end edit*

Also, whether or not you use DHCP, you still have to have seperate boot disks for computer names, unless you want to edit the ini/inf files on the disk each time and change the computer name. which you can do but would be fairly time consuming.

There isn't a naming issue apparently.... whether that is the newest ghost version or the fact that the computers are all running XP I am not sure, but no problems there.

NT/2k/2003 Server is not available... So, can you or anyone else recommend a free DHCP program.... or can you tell me how to get ICS going? I have not used it since windows 98.

Thanks for all your help so far, frumpco too.

*edit* computer does not have two nic's or anything, is there a way to make some kind of phantom connection to "share" just so i can use the dhcp service for my mini-network?

Demont said:

There isn't a naming issue apparently.... whether that is the newest ghost version or the fact that the computers are all running XP I am not sure, but no problems there.

NT/2k/2003 Server is not available... So, can you or anyone else recommend a free DHCP program.... or can you tell me how to get ICS going? I have not used it since windows 98.

Thanks for all your help so far, frumpco too.

*edit* computer does not have two nic's or anything, is there a way to make some kind of phantom connection to "share" just so i can use the dhcp service for my mini-network?

Click to expand...

ok, they must have taken care of the naming thing or something. as for a phantom device on Win2k? I really dont know of a way to do it, though it wouldnt cost too much to jsut toss antoher nic in the machine and use it as the "internet" connection.

For ICS you need two nics, one nic can go anywhere it wants(in this case) the other nic goes to the switch that the ghosting computers reside on. you then should be able to right click on the "empty" connection and select properties>sharing tab> "share this internet connection" you might have to install some extra software off the win2k disc if it wasnt installed by default. would be under the "networking section" for windows components. it should then set your computer withg a static address, then set the gateway for the other computers as the address for the local nic on the 2k machine and it should do dhcp for them. (if that doesnt work, enable the one that connects to the switch for sharing) sorry, perhaps someone else could help a bit better on it since I havent done it in a while and when it did it blew up shortly afterwards. (though I have qwest to thank for that )

*edit* and I know of no free dhcp server type utility. might have to google for that

got it to work. all i had to do was add a fake VPN connection and then go to the sharing tab there and enable ICS. the server then distributed IP's perfectly. (192.168.0.X of course). i didnt even have to connect the vpn to anything, it just had to exist. all we needed was the DHCP service that ICS provides to make a little temporary network for transferring images.

thanks again

Demont said:

got it to work. all i had to do was add a fake VPN connection and then go to the sharing tab there and enable ICS. the server then distributed IP's perfectly. (192.168.0.X of course). i didnt even have to connect the vpn to anything, it just had to exist. all we needed was the DHCP service that ICS provides to make a little temporary network for transferring images.

thanks again

Click to expand...

ah, VPN, hadnt thought of that. cool glad it works now, and willing to help anytime hehe, and have fun ghosting

Demont said:

well at least i figured out the reason... when you multicast... it just sends all the packets to everyone... the other option is unicast... but that only does one specific computer at a time... and that is so much slower than doing several at once.

still don't know the solution.

Click to expand...

Multicasting is supposed to send packets to multiple computers that are connected to the ghostcast server, but not to others. Broadcasting sends packets to everyone.

-ben

nebben said:

Multicasting is supposed to send packets to multiple computers that are connected to the ghostcast server, but not to others. Broadcasting sends packets to everyone.

-ben

Click to expand...

well, don't ask me... all I know is that it killed the entire network regardless.

ics works great though for not having nt/2k server.
just gotta disconnect the switch from the main network... make a fake vpn connection and then click sharing tab... then enable ICS... *bam* changes IP to 192.168.0.1 and dhcp is enabled. send/recieve images. then uncheck the ics and it instantly reverts back to the normal static ip and i can plug back into the network.

very easy and painless... for anyone who needs a dhcp server.

nebben said:

Multicasting is supposed to send packets to multiple computers that are connected to the ghostcast server, but not to others. Broadcasting sends packets to everyone.

-ben

Click to expand...

Thats true, except depending on how the computers are confiugred they may be static, in which case you would have to check what each IP address is and then run it. The problem is not necesarily with the broadcast/multicast its that they are all on the same network, so the switches/hubs/whatever still must handle all the packets even if its not being sent everywhere. So it just bogs down the network. The Idea here was to create a spereate network to run the ghost cast server on and therefore not hinder performance of corporate network and still be able to run ghosting efficiently.