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Multicast Imaging for Mac OS X?

Posted by Cliff on from the REAL-server-PUSH dept.

ATomkins asks: "The school where I work has 128 new G5s which will be set up in a couple of labs. We want to completely re-image all G5s at least every semester. Ideally, we would want to use something like Ghost to push the image out to all the Macs at once; with Dell boxen, under similar circumstances, this takes about 20-30 minutes. Is there a viable alternative for OS X?" "So far, among other things, we've tried NetInstall and ARD2, which preformed horribly, taking over 200 minutes using GigE. Our best solution has been Carbon Copy Cloner over FW800, but that costs a lot in terms of labour. UDPCast over a Gentoo LiveCD image (distributed via NetInstall) seemed promising, but is being troublesome.

Assuming block-level unicast isn't an option, does anyone have any ideas how we can make this more automated?"

14 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. NetRestore by huber · · Score: 5, Informative

    Netrestore http://www.bombich.com

    1. Re:NetRestore by kandersn · · Score: 2, Informative

      I agree, NetRestore is the way to go. Although NetRestore and Carbon Copy Cloner are just GUIs to the command line asr tool, they make the job much easier and more automated.

      I work for a school district and we have a dual 1.25 G MDD G4 as a NetRestore Server. I use this to reimage labs and new machines out of the box.

      Use the newest computer you have and set it up for the lab. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to create the image with. Boot the source computer in Target disk mode and plug it into your computer with a firewire cable. Make the image, scan for ASR, and compress it. Compressing takes longer to do, but it will restore faster later on.

      When we just need to reimage a few machines, we use a firewire drive with a bootable OS X system and NetRestore. When we have a whole lab to do, we use the NetRestore server. It doesn't multicast, but it goes pretty quick. You could easily do 125 machines in an afternoon. Mike Bombich has some excellent documentation on imaging and has earned a lot of respect and thanks from the Mac community.

    2. Re:NetRestore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      FYI, you could deploy that beast Dual-G4 as a real machine and use pretty much any G4 (or even a G3-500) as the image server with no loss in performance. Not criticizing, just pointing out that blowing a very expensive apple machine for a simple server task is massive overkill.

  2. ..Or Radmind by huber · · Score: 5, Informative

    Radmind works fatastically. i use it to manage about 600 macs with different loadsets using the tls certificate feature. http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/radmind/

    1. Re:..Or Radmind by iradik · · Score: 5, Informative

      I agree. For many years radmind was the only robust solution for OS X. It is by far the most widely used for this task. Though radmind is slow. It will take 2-8 hours to update your computers from scratch. However, why does it matter? Plus radmind will allow you to push incremental upgrades in as little as two minutes. It's somewhat difficult to learn, but the radmind user list is really really great. Most of the people on the list run big university labs or corporate labs and I find them to be really smart and creative. Check it out: http://www.radmind.org/

      Thoug I have to say sometimes radmind sucks, like if you go from Jaguar to Panther it can break. Though generally for minor system updates and security fixes it's okay. This is why you TEST! And if you need a full restore you use apple software restore or netrestore from Mike Bombich. I like that guy: http://www.bombich.com/ But then you need an Mac OS X Server http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/ as I recall, in which case, you might as well by an xserve http://www.apple.com/xserve/ since it comes with the software. But again you will only need Bombich once a year; so you can just visit every machine with a cd ad it might be as effective as all the ASR which I found to be difficult to implement. We had to get an Apple Engineer to set it up for us. heh.

  3. macosxlabs by brianmed · · Score: 5, Informative

    macosxlabs has articles and whatnot about this, i believe:

    From the site:
    Welcome to the web site for the Higher Education Mac OS X Lab Deployment Initiative. Our goal is to simplify the task of installing and maintaining Mac OS X in a computer lab.
    1. Re:macosxlabs by Graff · · Score: 4, Informative
      macosxlabs.org has articles and whatnot about this, i believe
      macosxlabs.org is definitely a great site to use as a resource. The specific area of the website to take a look at is the"Documentation - System Deployment & Maintenance" section. Here is a link to a PDF that explains how to use MacOS X Server, NetInstall, and Apple Software Restore to accomplish this task.

      If the copy operation is as slow as you are mentioning then the disk image that is being restored from probably was not properly prepared and so the image is probably being copied at the file level rather than the block level. This would cause the operation to take a great deal more time. As someone else mentioned, a man page listing of the asr shell tool under Mac OS X will show you a good discussion on optimizing restore speed. Here is a web site with that man page.
      --
      Sapere aude!
  4. Ghost 4 unix by fok · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the site:

    g4u ("ghost for unix") is a NetBSD-based bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows easy cloning of PC harddisks to deploy a common setup on a number of PCs using FTP."

    http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

    --
    \m/
  5. OS X Server + Net Install by PygmySurfer · · Score: 3, Informative

    Have you tried using OS X Server and Net Install?

    This document provides an overview of it, but doesn't really detail the procedure. Might at least point you in the right direction, however.

  6. Not NetRestore by Mikey-San · · Score: 4, Informative

    As far as I know and can tell, NetRestore isn't multicast imaging, guys. I've imaged thousands of machines with NetRestore, and while it's a wonderful wrapper for ASR and such, it's not what this guy is asking for.

    However, it would do his job just fine. If you've only 125 machines, and you're not pushing out more than one image, I bet you could do them all in a day or so by yourself. (A 2-gig image can be pushed to a new Mac in ten minutes or less, depending on its HD speed. If you do 24 at once--24 being a random switch port count I picked out of my head--you could do two to three sets in an hour, accounting for setup and breakdown time.) You're going to be limited by your network, mostly, as a single Xserve/NetRestore combo will tear through 20-40 machines at once, depending on image and client hardware (faster drives equals faster imaging).

    Tips:

    - Automate the shit out of it. NetRestore can run post-flight shell scripts and adjust computer/Rendezvous name on the way into the image process. You just gotta set it up.

    - Gigabitgigabitgigabit. If you don't have a gigE uplink to the server, prepare for some /pain./

    - Put your NetBoot image on one physical drive and your image(s) on another. Maximize those channels.

    - Visit macosxlabs.org and read as much as you can before you start. They've been there, done it, and own the t-shirt factory.

    NetRestore and NetRestore Helper are great tools, and should be just fine for 125 units.

    --
    Mikey-San
    Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
  7. Easy, non automated way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I use this method a high turn around, needed-it-yesterday rental house. Granted I only need to do about 10-15 systems at a time, but this non-automated way to 'Clone' Mac systems may be helpful.

    Server:
    - OS X 10.3 Server NetBooting 10.3 with Diskless option selected
    - A network accessible shared folder.

    Client:
    Any Mac configured exactly the way you want it.

    To make the Master image:

    NetBoot your template machine and use Disk Utility to 'Make Image' of the host computers HD - Save image to your shared folder.

    NetBoot your target system. Make accessible your disk image that you saved in your shared folder.

    Use Disk Utility to format its hard drive.

    Use Disk Utility to do a 'Restore' using the image as the 'Source' and the Mac HD as the target.

    Wash, rinse, repeat.

    Things to consider:

    Machine specific components, processor speed differences, etc. Make new images for different processor class machines. (i.e., Dual 1 Gig has much different architecture than a Dual 1.25, but the 1.25 is very similar to the 1.42 (FW800 on both).

    Safest bet is to make an image for each config/machine variation.

    A 2 gig image takes me about 20 Minutes. Be mindful that system speed and disk configuration will greatly affect performance.

    For more speed: RAID 0
    For redundancy: RAID 1
    For balance: RAID 5

    Your network architecture also plays a vital role, especially when attempting simultaneous restores. Most all Macs come with GigE now. If your IT budget can swing it, I would highly recommend picking one up (a GigE switch that is).

    Even if you use some of the other software recommendations, hard disk speed, network architecture and superfluous demand on the system will all play a big role the time it takes to complete.

    There are many ways to stream line this process, however this is what I need and this is what I do. I am always looking for new ways to automate and make easier the restore process.

    Already have Ghosting down to a science on the PC side of things.

    ----

    It's live long and PROSPER, not THRIVE...

  8. No multicast way by emerrill · · Score: 2, Informative

    I administer a couple Mac labs at a university, and best I know, there is no multicast way to push it. I would think one could be written tho, in the way of ghost.

    Every machine boots from a CD or, the net install boot system, then an application launch that then sycns up with a multicast system. Overall much the same way as ghost. Hmm... maybe a new programming project.

  9. It's a Mac... by the+hopthrisC · · Score: 4, Informative

    Everything you need is already there:

    http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/netboot.html

  10. Re:200 Minutes over Gigabit? by ATomkins · · Score: 2, Informative

    Our mac image is 21 gigs compressed, or 28 gigs uncompressed.

    The Dell image is 10-15 gigs, depending on the purpose of the lab.

    And it was 200 minutes per machine. We had 1 Xserve serving the image to 1 dual 1.8GHz G5 over a gigabit switch and got a final time of 211:45