I have about 30 machines out there. Each machine has multiple partitions. When the machine boots, the System Commander boot manager gives them a list of 3 choices of which partition they can boot into.
Ideally, when the user selects one of these options, I’d like the machine (connected to the network) to boot from a master image or boot server, also connected to the network. This would download the operating system (probably but not necessarily windows xp), as well as a standard set of applications that are specific to the selected environment.
The only other solution I see is to have the entire environment for each partition loaded totally on the hard drive of each of the 30 machines. But I don’t like this solution because if I need to apply a Windows patch, and/or provide a new image for one of the applications, then I need to propogate that to all 30 machines. Yea, I could use Norton Ghost Enterprise to do that, but then you need to boot each of the 30 machines using the Ghost boot floppy, and it all starts to fall into the “too hard” category.
Any insights you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Jon
Ideally, when the user selects one of these options, I’d like the machine (connected to the network) to boot from a master image or boot server, also connected to the network. This would download the operating system (probably but not necessarily windows xp), as well as a standard set of applications that are specific to the selected environment.
The only other solution I see is to have the entire environment for each partition loaded totally on the hard drive of each of the 30 machines. But I don’t like this solution because if I need to apply a Windows patch, and/or provide a new image for one of the applications, then I need to propogate that to all 30 machines. Yea, I could use Norton Ghost Enterprise to do that, but then you need to boot each of the 30 machines using the Ghost boot floppy, and it all starts to fall into the “too hard” category.
Any insights you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Jon