Symantec Ghost Solution Suite Reviews & Product Details

Moving from Altiris DS6.9 has been a smooth transition as the interface largely remains unchanged although a few things under the hood have changed. It didn't take very long to get a test server up and running and some of our old jobs ported across for testing builds of our latest generation of hardware. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We've encountered a few bugs with this, particular experiencing agent crashes on clients connecting from automation. Although that said feeding back these issues has resulted in a fix so the product is becoming more and more stable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's a good solution to make a standard based image with what we need. Using sysprep, we can deploy a standard drive with all software needed in no time to any user who has issues with a system that has completely gone down. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ghost has some issues with drivers on dell laptops. Hard to get ghost boot to work correctly via network. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Centralized console.

Easy way to deploy agent.

Lot of different tasks and remote managing features.

SQL based database, so you can get more info with a SQL query.

Symantec support in case of issue. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There isn't a way to import a list of computers whom assign a task.

Import / export is too poor, need to run external SQL query to have a report.

Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ghost Solution Suite 3 highly responsive deployment tool for Windows, Mac and Linux. Coming from Altiris DS6.9, we found this a very easy product to get up and running -took about an hour.

Best feature is the live feedback with the deployment agent. This means that when you assign tasks to computers you pretty much instantly get a response and can see in the console whether the task is completed yet and what the status is. The Win32 console means no need to wait for sluggish web page refreshes.

There is something quite cool about dropping an imaging task on a lap of computers and then see them all reboot into the imaging environment, in sync, right in front of you.

With GSS3, jobs can be parameterised. When creating jobs, you can create parameters which refer directly to computer attributes in the underlying Microsoft SQL database. This allows the same job to do slightly different things on different computers. For example, you can have a script to install drivers which uses the model information to target the correct section in a driver library. Or create a task to deploy VPN software which will only proceed with the install if it finds it's being executed on a laptop.

The level of automation which can be achieved is immense. And should you get stuck, there is a lot of community support on the Symantec Connect website that I've found incredibly useful over the years. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Symantec can drop or replace functionality with little warning. You have to read the release notes with each version update rather carefully to be sure that something you rely on hasn't been binned.

The 32-bit consoles currently do not possess an 'idle' mode. As open consoles poll the backend database rather frequently, you have to consider carefully how to manage the SQL load in environments where you give many techs console access. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Simplicity and intuitivity.

With little experience you can do a lot: Check inventory, Deploy SW, Tune configuration

Of course, well configured imaging is another story... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Lack of integration with SMP infrastructure (it used to be in NS6)

I am also missing Web-based console (it used to be in DS6) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.