Networking Help???

smith.p.sean · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 2:37 pm Post subject: Networking Help???

Ok, heres the down low.
I am happily employed as a computer/network technician at my school hospital. Im making great money as a student, and they are paying for all of my certifications.

Those were the plusses.

My problem is that i need to set up Ghost Solution Suite 2. and using ghost console, push out OS images to the machines.
Basically, because i work for a hospital, we have to be HIPAA compliant. Therefore, each mac adress of every computer has to be manually registered with a static IP adress in a program called IPman. The hospitals network consists of two V-Lans labeled clinical and non-clinical. (this is a problem separate of the one i am currently addressing.)
Each computer must also have a specific name that has to be registered on the domain.

There is no way that i can get around manually adding the MAC address and a static IP to IP man.

We have no DHCP server.

My question is, is it possible to create an image, for deployment where i could setup an answer file with sysman.exe or something of the like, where it would automatically name the computers and set their IP addresses based on the systems MAC address. I also want it to add this computer to our domain.

Any suggestions on readings would be appreciated. Or any guidance for that matter. This is my first experience where i cant use RIS and a DHCP server. It makes it a lot more complicated for easy deployments.

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smith.p.sean · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 2:50 pm Post subject:

sorry. Not sysman.exe rather setupmgr.exe. The manager used for making sysprep.inf files.

ToggleHead · TWEAKGURU Joined: 03 Mar 2004 Posts: 4360 Location: Jersey

Are you trying to do a roll out build?

If so....and these machines arent already on the domain...how on earth will you even talk to them to push out the OS build? Get me?
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smith.p.sean · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 7:46 pm Post subject:

HAHAHAHA i laughed my as5 off after reading the dear admin post TH.
Basically, you can have a computer without an operating system on it. A brand new build. If you plug it into a network and boot using PXE, it can find an image on a image server, and install it, over the network. Because computers are purchased in mass quantity, such as 50 at a time, you can roll out a single image to the many computers at once, saving a lot of time. This is no problem when you are using a DHCP server and dynamic IP adresses.

When a certain machine obtains its IP adress, based on its mac adress (static IP) it gets all fucked out of wack. It is possible to force installs over the network on these machines, but it is easiest to do one by one. I have 50 computers that I want to deploy the same image too without having to manually configure each one. If somehow i could use either ghost walker or an answer file with sysprep. To automatically assign an IP adress to the computer based on the MAC adress, it would save me a lot of time. All i would have to do is specify in the answer file what MAC gets what IP. It would assign the computer the IP adress and then continue its work, adding it to the domain. Its really easy in theory... the problem is i have no freakin idea how to do it.

smith.p.sean · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 7:53 pm Post subject:

i remember that using RIS you had to clone them in a workgroup and then on restart add them to the domain, but we were still able to push the install to the computers using PXE, over the network? This might have been due to the dynamic IP assigning and in DOS you dont use SIDs. This whole security thing makes life a lot harder.
What i might end up doing is making a private network with the image server on it, and cloning them that way. I wish there was a way though to include a list of MAC adresses and their associated IPs in the answer file.

ToggleHead · TWEAKGURU Joined: 03 Mar 2004 Posts: 4360 Location: Jersey

fussnfeathers · Lord of the Tweak Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 2763

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Frenchy is looking to backup and restore various computers on the network, hence the "Ghost" part. Just setting up a temp DHCP server isn't an option, and HIPAA regulations require that each backup be registered to a specific machine, so that one department can't accidentally get another department's files.........hence, DHCP wouldn't work anyway, as that randomly generates IP addys to connected machines.

Unfortunately, I have no solution........just stating why Frenchy needs it done this way. I can ask at work, we're HIPAA compliant as well, but we only have 15 machines total (including mine at home), and I have no idea how they backup or restore. For us, our stuff is mostly server based, so it's a simple matter of restoring the client applications and setting up ports and such.
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smith.p.sean · Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:52 am Post subject:

Thanks for the ideas. Fuss has got it figured out. We cant mix up clinical and non clinical like Fuss said.

What i think im going to end up doing, since I already have an image made for both clinical and non clinical is deploy like 10 computers at a time, stock from dell. I will set the 10 IP adresses manually on the machines. Then ill force install ghost client on them. Then I will force the image on them from ghost console. Ill just make a new image for each that hasnt had sysprep run. Once they are initially set up, using ghost console and ghost client, they are easy to maintain.

Any other ideas are welcome though. :)

ToggleHead · TWEAKGURU Joined: 03 Mar 2004 Posts: 4360 Location: Jersey

OH....ok now i see whats going on here.

Yeah...good luck! =P

Let us know what you did though!
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smith.p.sean · Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 11:19 am Post subject:

2old2care · Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 3:16 pm Post subject:

I hear you frenchy....and yes with mac addressing you'll more than likely have to do each one's network stuff.
BUT...a new role out on 50 machines bought from Dell....do you really trust Dell to shake out the hardware properly? And, don't you need to apply asset tags or similar while verifying each new unit? What I'm getting at here is you really will need to handle each one anyway, to do your job correctly. Sooo....how about using a nice fast flash drive on the rollout?
Also....when I do "desktop support" as we call it here, I really do not image a machine remotely to fix a problem. I get off my arse and go look at it. People will do the damndest things to the boxes at work. One off my pet peaves is shoving it all the way back on the padded walls of cubes and boxing it in. Can we say crimped cords and can't breathe.
Of course, remote access is a handy thing for the daily "can't find my toolbar" or "the file was here yesterday" issues. But, IMO the best thing is to go help these people, educate them, so maybe you won't have to do it again tomorrow.

my 2¢
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smith.p.sean · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 9:13 am Post subject:

I hear what your saying 2old. Since the hospital is on campus at UCF, the computers come to us already tagged and tested from the main computer operations center on campus. Also, im not looking to fix problems. I have to run around and do those by hand like you said. Im just looking to roll out an OS with all of our programs that the doctors use on them and set up in a timely fashion.
Just to clarify, I wasnt talking about using remote desktop to troubleshoot.

2old2care · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 10:24 am Post subject:

The remote desktop statement was just a day to day working thing I threw in. Didn't mean anything.

I used to use ghost (back at V7) and ghost explorer to do network imaging and backing up some time ago. I still use Ghost 9 for local imaging. I gave up using ghost on the network for a couple reasons, the big one being speed. The network we have, was and still is 100T. A lot of places, because of existing cabling and hardware are still. That is why I thought maybe a fast flash drive. It might be quicker if you have to go to each machine individually because of the physical addressing issue.
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smith.p.sean · Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 9:40 am Post subject:

how do i load an image on a flash drive?? and then boot from it. Or are you talking about just loading ghost onto the flash drive, and then installing the image off of cds?

no offense taken 2 Old. I thought that maybe i had been unclear in what i had posted. Thanks for the help.

ToggleHead · TWEAKGURU Joined: 03 Mar 2004 Posts: 4360 Location: Jersey

For the flash drive...you can just tell the image to save to the flash.

Although, i would make sure the PCs have the "boot from USB device" or some derivitive in the BIOS before trying that...
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2old2care · Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 11:56 am Post subject:

Yep, I assummed <<bad thing to do<< that since they are new units that they will boot or at least access USB from BIOS. If they boot then make a bootable image on the flash drive. If they will just access, make a ghost bootable cd, then once in the proggy direct to the Flash drive.
Regardless, you will set up a beautiful first machine to make your image file on. Then just copy the .gho file to the flash drive.
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smith.p.sean · Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 9:43 am Post subject:

ok, sounds good.
What ive ended up doing thus far, is making my own little network to do the ghosting. Ive just been loading all of the computers with ghost console client and updating thier asset and ownership tags. The image isnt ready yet, so ive got some time. Then when i plug them all back in, they will already have the client and i can push the update to them. We'll just add them to the domain by hand because of the static IP adressing.

Thanks for all the help, ill let you guys know how it goes.