[geeks] MS SBS Server - issues and questions

[Phil Brutsche]

Brian Dunbar wrote:
> Ghost is expensive but g4u** seems like a decent alternative.  Plus
> it's BSD so we can put my unix skillz*** to work.

I strongly suggest you look at Ghost.

g4u is very, very slow and is a disk hog.  Got a 40GB partition with 1GB
of data?  Be prepared to watch 40GB-worth of bits fly over your network!
 Yes, that's right, g4u gets *everything*, including the unused sectors.
 Did I mention that it's slow?  Last time I tried to use it took almost
6 hours to transfer a 40GB volume.  Ghost would have done the same in
under 3.

Remember that 40GB volume with 1GB used?  Ghost would transfer only the
FS metadata and the actual data, resulting in only a little more than
1GB transferred over your network and stored on your file server.  It
will also transfer the image at 2 or 3 times the data rate.

My own recommendation would be, in this order:

a) Symantec Ghost or the equivalent
b) Manually re-install - seriously, it's faster than watching g4u
   transfer 40GB at 2MB per second
c) g4u

Oh, and unattended (http://unattended.sourceforge.net/) is an excellent
alternative to using ghost.  Might even help you with SBS2003 - never
tried it with that but unattended works great with a basic Win2k3 install.

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at tux.obix.com