Red Hat Satellite vs. Symantec Ghost Solution Suite

Red Hat Satellite works amazingly with servers that need more control over their packages. For one or two servers that you're just doing "dnf update" Red Hat Satellite is way overkill.

Incentivized

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite is well suited to standard images of company approved software and standard configurations for all users. When every user has the same computer configuration, it is easily managed with a standard image across the board. It is less effective if you need to have multiple configurations for different groups. It becomes cumbersome to manage all the various images. When you add to the complexity by having to address the different drivers for the different hardware model computers, this only adds to the overall number of images you will have to manage, create and keep updated. I find Ghost most helpful with standard hardware model computers and one or two images company wide.

Incentivized

• Patches
• License Management
• Dashboards / Visibility

• Pushing out scripts and jobs to computers
• Remote imaging and pushing out Windows OS Images
• Helping to track who pushed out what jobs

Incentivized

• I woud love for it to provide the same functionality for non-RHEL OS's
• Containerized Installation
• Simplified workflow setup

Incentivized

• Initial install could be easier. Had to call support to assist.
• Joining domains had a few kinks that had to be figured out.

Incentivized

When you're first getting into the platform, the GUI can be a little confusing. It takes a little while to get accustomed to where everything is, and what everything is used for. I highly recommend prior training / classes before diving into the platform. This will ensure a better transition into the platform, and more likely to use more features of it overall due to the new knowledge gained

The Symantec Ghost Solutions Suite learning curve isn't that steep.

• We have been able to automate the update process to not require after-hours monitoring.
• Centralizing updates has greatly reduced the overall time servers are down and processing their individual updates.
• We are able to bring our own RPM packages in and stage them in the same deployment model as official Red Hat packages.

Incentivized

• A positive impact of Ghost would be time. To deploy computers form scratch is very time consuming and labor intensive for the IT Department. Ghost clearly saves the time of the IT departments staff to quickly get a new computer out to user so they can spend their time on addressing other issues and being more productive.
• Time is money. If the IT department is spending hours preparing computers and employees are out of a computer for an extended period of time waiting for one to be loaded, this is money lost to the company in paying employees to sit around and wait for a computer to be configured.

Incentivized