How to use the Initial Deployment Menu in Ghost Solution Suite 3.X

Products

• Ghost Solution Suite

Issue/Introduction

 

Resolution

When a PC boots to PXE for the first time it will display the Initial Deployment Menu. The Initial Deployment Menu is a list of jobs that can be selected to run against the target PC. Initial Deployment provides the easiest way to run jobs on new client computers. 

• The Initial Deployment menu only applies to PXE (ethernet) boot configurations. 
• Initial deployment is only available for Ghost Solution Suite, not Ghost Standard Tools. 
• The Initial Deployment menu will only appear for "Unknown" PC's. That is, it only appears for computers than have never had an agent installed, and only the very first time a machine boots into PXE. You can delete a computer from the computers panel in the Ghost Console to cause the Initial Deployment menu to appear again for a PC, but be sure to shut down the agent service on the client PC before you do so or the client will simply reappear in a moment.

To add jobs to the Initial Deployment menu follow these steps:

1. Launch the Ghost Solution Suite Console
2. Double Click "Initial Deployment", the top item in the jobs panel.
3. Click the Jobs tab.
4. Click New to create a new job for the Initial Deployment menu, or click Add Existing to add a job that you have already created. 
5. Suggestions for using Initial Deployment safely:
6. If a Deploy Image task is set as the default job, and especially if Initial deployment is set to Timeout and Proceed a visitor to your network runs the risk of accidentally imaging their machine - which is unrecoverable.
7. Create a "Wait" job, and have that job set as the Default Job in Initial Deployment.  (If a "Distribute Disk Image" job is the default job, the user would only have to hit the enter key to start imaging. Instructions for creating a Wait job are in TECH247897.
8. Uncheck Timeout after X seconds and proceed.  If you configure Initial Deployment in the way described in this document a user can only accidentally image their machine if select the imaging job and proceed.   Note: In versions 3.3 GA and earlier if you do not check the time out button, the initial deployment job times out after 255 seconds.  This behavior will be updated in GSS 3.3 RU1 and later to wait indefinatly for a user selection if it is unchecked.
9. Click OK.

Using Initial Deployment on a new PC:

1. When you power on the PC for the first time enter the Firmware/BIOS setup...
2. Set PXE (Ethernet) to be first in the boot order. 
3. Continue the bootup process - the machine should start by downloading files from the server and will then boot to Windows PE. (PXE troubleshooting is covered in another document.)
4. Choose a Distribute Disk Image job from the Initial Deployment Menu.
   Ghost should launch and begin imaging immediately.

Additional Information

REFERENCE ID : : 4157902