recovering a PC from Virtual image

[Weacey]

Hello All,

I'm looking into the possibility of creating images of our PC's in VMWare for perofrming PC software recovery as you would with products like Symantec Ghost and Acronis SnapDeploy. The reason we can't use these products is, as far as i'm aware, you can't update an image with new software releases as they become available without completely recreating the image. If anyone can help me with this it would be great. I need to know the following:
1. Is this possible in VMWare?
2. How do you apply a virtual image to a physical PC?
3. Would it be possible to keep one image up to date with new Windows updates and software releases and deploy the image over diferent makes and models of PC and laptop?

Mnay Thanks...

 

[TechyMcSe2k]

You would need to V2P your base image (Virtual Base Image) to your physical machines. This image would need to be tweaked with Sysprep to allow for modifications of dislike hardware. Just like ghosting and Acronis.

Here is one software to do it.

http://www.vizioncore.com/index.php

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[Provogeek]

It sounds to me like you are looking for a process, not a product.

You CAN keep a Virtual Machine maintained with recent updates for any prepackaged applications and utilities. You CAN use this VM to build a Sysprep image to deploy to PC's. Will VMWare deploy this image? no, that is not part of the product.

There is VMWare View (

http://www.vmware.com/products/view/),

that distributes virtual PC's to users, but it does not push an image from a Virtual PC to a Physical PC. It works similar to Citrix, except instead of a shared computing environment, each Virtual PC is independant of each other. You can use a client, or a web browser to access the PC. You can dynamicly provision virtual PC's to users on an as needed basis. So in essence, this gives you what you want in a sence. A single virtual PC that can be used to deploy updated base images to a user.

What I think you would really need is a full desktop management package like ZENworks, LANdesk, or Alteris (or maybe SMS). Create a base image with as little as possible installed, create a process that installs updates and apps, create a process that deploys updates to systems and apps. All of these desktop products are capable of doing it, be sure to demo before you purchase and deploy. All have their advantages over the other, and all have their annoyances.

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