Johannesburg, 15 Sep 1999
Symantec Corporation today announced Norton Ghost 6.0, designed to dramatically reduce the time spent by system administrators when restoring, reconfiguring or cloning PCs across the enterprise. Available in Standard and Enterprise editions, Norton Ghost 6.0 includes the Ghost application and MultiCast Server and MultiCast Assist Wizard, Ghost Walker, Ghost Explorer, and the GDISK utility. Norton Ghost 6.0 Enterprise also includes the Norton Ghost Console and Console Client for remote management and post-cloning configuration.
According to research from Gartner Group and Forrester Research, MIS departments spend 50 percent of their time installing software and performing upgrades, accounting for a significant portion of the total cost of PC/server ownership.
Corporations spend approximately R56 000.00 to R74 000.00 per user per year on maintenance, configuration, and installation of new PCs. Norton Ghost is an effective tool for addressing these challenges, leveraging the proven cost-effective process of cloning a large number of PCs within a networked enterprise environment. Ghost extends those benefits even further by including remote management and post-cloning configuration capabilities.
"With Norton Ghost 6.0, IT Managers will be ensured the best of breed disk cloning software coupled with a set of centralized management tools and post-configuration utilities to truly establish a policy of IT cost containment," said Jako Voges, Marketing Manager for Symantec`s Middle East & Africa region. "Norton Ghost is the proven leader in disk cloning technology and version 6.0 with its new features, allows IT managers a faster and easier to use solution for PC recovery and deployment."
"With Norton Ghost 6.0, Symantec provides Corporate IT with a great method of installing Windows 2000 on desktop and mobile computers, adding a flexible, fast and robust tool to the growing arsenal of utilities already available to ease large scale migration to Windows 2000," said Tod Nielsen, vice president of developer marketing for Microsoft.
Using Norton Ghost 6.0, administrators can set up a single PC and clone a standard disk image across the entire enterprise, including local, networked systems or laptop computers. A new Win32 client supports server-initiated cloning activity, which allows for the complete cloning and post-cloning reconfiguration of clients from the administrator`s console and eliminates the need for the administrator to visit a user`s workstation with a boot disk. A new Tasks management functionality provides clear procedural guidelines, allowing the administrator to specify the sequence of events such as cloning, post-cloning configuration, or unique Windows NT SID generation. An event log provides verification and alerting. After completion of a given task, a new event log is generated which includes a task summary that tallies the number of clients to which the task was applied and then notes the results.
Critical workstation configuration data is stored in the Norton Ghost Console, enabling the quick reconfiguration of a machine after the cloning operation. This includes such data as machine name, workgroup, domain, gateway, machine description, and TCP/IP settings. A new Client Grouping feature simplifies the targeting of machines by allowing a system administrator to include certain clients or sets of groups in a PC recovery, rollout or upgrade.
For increased usability, Ghost Explorer now has the ability to browse images and add specified files and folders. In addition, an enhanced GDISK utility addresses both performance and ease-of-use issues by extending cleaning and repartitioning capabilities to drives larger than 8GB as well as providing a Department of Defense (DOD) specified wipe of a disks content.
Norton Ghost 6.0 provides more robust operation in a wider range of environments. By expanding file system support to include the EXT/2 file system, Norton Ghost 6.0 provides cloning capabilities for Linux environments. Additionally, Norton Ghost 6.0 is Windows 2000 beta 3 ready, thereby making it an effective tool for the growing number of corporations migrating to Microsoft`s new operating system. For increased flexibility, enhancements to Ghost Multicast Server enable administrators to multicast a Ghost image from a NetWare server.
Pricing and Availability
Norton Ghost is purchased through site licenses. A list of authorized resellers can be found at http://www.symantec.co.za/region/za/purchase/resellers.html on Symantec`s Website. For further information please contact our sales department on (011) 804 4670.
Share