cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

SSR vs. Ghost for multiple 1-time image/restores

MIXIT
Level 6
Partner Accredited

Hi all. 

I'm failry familiar with SSR 2013 R2, but not Ghost (other than to know it does imaging).  Yet I don't know if either of these two products are what I need for a specific project as outlined below.  Here's what I hope to do:

For a small business client, I am going to upgrade them to Windows 10 on existing computers.  The plan is hopefully to be able to image Computer A, immediately restore Computer A's image to a temporary computer and give the user that temp computer for a day or two.  I then take Computer A and upgrade it to Win 10 along with everything else on the machine.  Once complete, I remove the temp PC and put back in Computer A for the user again.  My guess is that if I had to do this with SSR, I'd want to create a custom recovery disc each time since the machines are different. 

 

I would then repeat this image/resotre process about a dozen times, one at a time for each computer.  There is no server, no AD or automated deployment options here - low budget environment and so the work would just be hands-on one computer at a time. 

 

Is SSR or Ghost the way to go?  Not just technically, but license-wise as well.  I am not looking to buy a dozen licenses as this is a one-time only project. 

 

Thank you! 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

I'm no expert in Ghost but the products are very similar.

What you are doing is basically a backup/restore (I know you mentioned 'image') so SSR is more than capable of achieving what you are trying to do. You should not have to create a separate recovery disk for each machine/model but what you are likely to need is to ensure the recovery disk contains the relevant disk/network card drivers for each machine/model.

Sorry I cannot answer this from a licensing perspective. You should probably speak with our licensing team to get their view on the number of licenses needed for this project.

View solution in original post

4 REPLIES 4

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

I'm no expert in Ghost but the products are very similar.

What you are doing is basically a backup/restore (I know you mentioned 'image') so SSR is more than capable of achieving what you are trying to do. You should not have to create a separate recovery disk for each machine/model but what you are likely to need is to ensure the recovery disk contains the relevant disk/network card drivers for each machine/model.

Sorry I cannot answer this from a licensing perspective. You should probably speak with our licensing team to get their view on the number of licenses needed for this project.

MIXIT
Level 6
Partner Accredited

Ok will do (with the licensing team).  Thanks for the guidance as well.  Now, I am confused on one point.  If I'm making a recovery disc, and this is something I have very limited experience doing actually, but do I hae some option to specify the drivers without having to go around to each computer?  And with that, I assume it needs to be a read/write recovery disc, like a USB stick, rather than a wreitable DVD?

 

Thanks again. 

 

 

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Yes, correct - you have an option to add additional drivers when creating/modifying the recovery disk. You just need to know which drivers need adding that will work with the machines you are going to be restoring to.

MIXIT
Level 6
Partner Accredited

So I imagine then that I could just create a recovery disc on any Win 10 machine currently running SSR 2013 R2 (SP4), even ones here at my own office, and can manually add what drivers I need.  I've only ever created a recovery disc on the machine in question and never did this one-to-many approach so I'll have to just give it a go and see how well it plays out.  Thanks very much.