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Deploy computer with Ghost to ease the from-scratch loading process
November 19, 2018

Deploy computer with Ghost to ease the from-scratch loading process

Dave King | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Symantec Ghost Solution Suite

We use Ghost Solution Suite to image new and existing computers. We use it company wide. We use Ghost for new computers to image them with a company approved image when they arrive. We also find it helpful to re-image an existing computer when an employee leaves. Rather then give an existing computer to a new employee, we find it better to clean out the computer so the installation of Windows and the company applications are fresh. We find using Ghost makes this a quicker process and provides a new employee a clean computer, free of old files, settings and cache from the old users. This saves us time form having to install everything from scratch.
  • Ghost saves valuable time by imaging a new computer rather than having to setup new or existing computers from scratch.
  • You can build a library of images to be used for workstations and servers. Depending on the particular usage for the computer or server, you can deploy the image most appropriate for that computer or server.
  • Another big benefit is saving time on having to configure or remember all the custom setting you may need. Ghost Solution saved the setting configurations in the image, saving you hours of manual configurations.
  • Even though Ghost Solution Suite saves configurations, software settings and installation within the image, there is still some manual configuration that needs to be done once the image is complete.
  • Installing Drivers for specific models of computers. With Ghost Solution Suite, it can be difficult to get the drivers for all the hardware of all the different model computers, so you have to create different images for different model computers. It would be nice to have the ability to have a hardware independent image for all model computers
  • Image Size. Ghost does have compression to reduce the size of the image, but when you have to store all the drivers within the image it increases the total size of the image you need to manage.
  • 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.
Based on our particular company needs, we selected Ghost primarily for the cost. There are better products out there to deploy new computers. KACE was one of the products tested. I used KACE at a previous company and I can say KACE is a more effective deployment method, but the cost prevented us form going with this product. Also, since we have one single standard image it was very easy to manage Ghost for all our employee computers. We also standardized to one single hardware model computer which also made the decision to use Ghost easier.
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.