What do you have FOG running on?

[Kevin]

So let’s get a thread going on your setup. What do you have FOG running on, a physical server or VM? What are the specs of your servers? What main features do you use of FOG? How many computers do you have working with FOG? What OS do you have FOG running on? What kind of network do you have FOG running on? (10Gbe backbones? 1Gbe to PC’s? 100 meg to PC’s?) Of course, nothing personal should be posted about what company you work for etc.

[Catsrules]

I have fog running on a ubuntu 10.10 VM, running on ESXI.
The host server specs
Intell i7 2600K
16GB DDR3 Ram
~8TB a HD space with mismatch hard drives

I am running this on my home network, so nothing to extreme over here. Have 10 computers all running on 1GB network. A few of the computers have there own image, but most have a generic base win 7 image that I can quickly deploy to any computer. I have windows 7 computers and i am starting to get in to Ubuntu, so also have a few Ubuntu computers that I image as well.

As far a features I use imaging of course, the inventory system, and the others tasks yous can send out to clients, like clam av and disk check are very helpful. I also love PXE, starting to add 3ed party iso to it. I would love snapins but I haven’t figured out how to use them yet.

[Kevin]

At home I run FOG on VMware Workstation 8 on “the rig” (see my signature). At work, we run it on a server running ESX and vSphere with a Intel Xeon E7-L8867. This images around 9,200 computers for us. We mainly use FOG for imaging and the hardware inventory. We also use snap-ins as a backup to SCCM.

[Markverg]

9,200 computers? Realy cool!

I’m using FOG on a dedicated Dell 780, 4GB RAM on a 1GB network.
Currently imaging around 200-250 computers. Deployment runs very very fast, it’s running at full network speed without problems and while deploying it’s just using a few 100 mb’s of RAM.

Also using the fog user tracker to check how many users are login in/out and checking where pc’s are rarely being used so we can move them to other locations.

[matt314159]

Just to keep the thread going I’ll add my two bits in…doing a small bench deployment this week on an Optiplex 745 with 2GB ram.

if we switch to FOG we will be using it on about 700 computers. Our old ghost server is a simple Core2 Duo tower that I might use, unless they want to visualize it, though I’d have to look at the pros and cons of that.

[Kevin]

@matt, I think you mean virtualize Here are my two cents on physical vs. virtual:

In my opinion, most servers should be virtual. I prefer our FOG servers to be virtual in our environments for the following reasons:

1. All of our servers are backed up daily, and virtual servers are really just 1 file, the virtual hard disk.
2. Real servers are built on much better hardware, i.e. Intel Xeon, redundant power supplies etc - more efficient and better reliability
3. If your server is in a data center (depending on the size company) there is a good chance you would be on a 10Gbe backbone, or a trunked 1Gbe connection, whereas on a physical box, you would more than likely be on a 1Gbe at most.
4. If you need to beef up a server, it’s as simple as moving a slider or clicking a box in a drop down menu. You don’t physically upgrade anything (assuming you have extra power to tap from your physical server box)

If you want to see the benefits of virtual PC’s I recommend trying VMWare view, or if you are looking for a more server type solution, to look at VMWare ESXi. Both products are free. (There are others out their as well, however, you will find VMWare to be the “industry standard” which is why i’m suggesting these products.)

[matt314159]

Ha…yes, I meant virtualize. Thanks for the info! Our current ghost server is a minitower PC that sits right next to my office desktop. It was that way when I got here and I never questioned it. It would make sense to have it in our network center and backed up, etc.

[Catsrules]

I also like virtualize, because it saves power/money/enviroment, I run mine from home, so I pay the bills, and it is anywhere from $15-30 a month in power to run a computer/server 24/7. I have 7 virtual computer running on 1 box. that is saving me ~$120 a month just in power.

[DJCminuz]

I have Fog virtualized as well, most dynamic imaging software out there.

its on a Dell R710
ESX 4
64gb
2 3.2 GHz six core xeons processors

[zaadstra]

I have FOG 0.32 on a VM ESXi 4.0, assigned 1 cpu, 1GB mem and 4GB disk (plus an 15GB images partition),
cpu is intel E2200 dual core (a standard desktop pc).
Host OS is Lubuntu 11.10

It is running at home, just testing and learning. At work I’m an Altiris admin, and I’m looking to find all usefull
features in FOG.

[Bill Foskett]

My FOG server is in a Microsoft Hyper-V session on a IBM x3560. Hyper-V session is running Ubuntu 11.10 and running FOG version 0.32.

Host Server Specs:
2x 8core Xeon processor @ 2.25 ghz
14GB RAM
Boot HDD - 2x 72GB mirrored
Data HDD - 12x 1TB, RAID 5 and formatted = 10TB usable space.
23-slot LTO4 backup tape loader
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 x64

[falko]

current server spec is:
fog 0.32, kernel 3.2.4, ubuntu server 10.04
Intel Core2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz, 2 cores
2gb ram
1TB HD

network is cisco 100mg to desktop, FOG multicasting across two Vlans, also used to auto-join domain, and looking to test package deployments.

unicast speeds of 1.25gb/min :: multicast speed around 670mb/min

[kirksec]

Current server spec is:
fog 0.32, kernel 3.2.4, Centos 6
Intel Pentium D CPU 3.4Ghz
4gb ram
1TB HD

100mb to desktop, Server is on a GB switch

unicast speeds of 1.25gb/min :: multicast speed around 670mb/min

[Robin Commander]

HP Microserver N40L running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with a pair of 1Tb hdd’s in raid1 for image storage. Isolated network running into a cheap Netgear Gbe switch to unicast to 10 machines at a time.

I look after around 3000 x Panasonic Toughbooks which have a hard life out with Field based workers so the HDD sector scan function comes in very handy.

Cheers
Robin

[chad-bisd]

Was VM on esxi in an intel blade server setup but the FOG server was running into resource issues when imaging multiple computers. Started out great, but would stall at 200 MiB/min when imaging lately.

Now it’s on a Dell PowerEdge 2600 with 2 x 2.4 Ghz Dual Core Xeons, 8GB RAM, and 6x73GB 10k drives in raid 5. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, with LTSP enhancements for ProxyDHCP functionality.

I also moved the server from the main switch which also had the rest of the servers and stuff, to a decidated switch in my workroom. Now I can image laptops and desktops that are in for service without impacting the rest of the network. 3.2 GiB/min with the new setup.

We’re a school, so the workload is usually 1 to 10 computers images per week, except in July/August when we image every laptop and desktop in the district, which is now up to 800 computers.

[Derek Boyer]

fog 0.32, Fedora 16
Dell PowerEdge 2800
2x 3.0GHz Dual Core Xenon
4GB RAM
4x 73GB 10,000rpm HDDs in RAID 5

Network is mostly 10/100 with select switches slowly being upgraded to 10/100/1000 to match the backbone.

99% of workstations are running Windows XP (remainder is Windows 7)

Currently have about 500 machines used with FOG and a couple hundred that I still rely on ghost to image until I get around to building a custom kernel with all of the appropriate drivers.

[Matt Harding]

In the college I work at I’m a network technician in one department and network administrator and only technician in a smaller department, the latter of which has virtually no budget, so I have to scrimp and scrape what I can together and any server hardware is donated from the main department I work in. Consequently I came across fog about 4 months back. I previously used DRBL server with clonezilla to image the 34 machines for our Cisco academy network but switched to fog 0.32 before the summer. The no budget aspect means the most powerful machine I could have is a core i5 2500 quad core, 16GB ram, with 3x 1TB drives in RAID5 setup.

Software wise the host OS is Slackware 13.37 x64 and I’m running Virtualbox 4.1 to host 4 virtual PCs. I wasn’t really sure that Virtualbox was up to the job of running a fog server before the summer but after extensive testing under loads it can quite comfortably support my Ubuntu Server 10.04 / fog 0.32 setup.

I just thought I’d add my 2 pennies (2 cents as the Americans say) worth as I’ve not seen many people using Virtualbox to host things like this. I’m very comfortable relying on it though for the conditions I work in with this smaller network.

Anyone else using fog on Virtualbox?? I’d love some feedback on your experiences.

[falko]

[quote=“Matt Harding, post: 8683, member: 1207”]In the college I work at I’m a network technician in one department and network administrator and only technician in a smaller department, the latter of which has virtually no budget, so I have to scrimp and scrape what I can together and any server hardware is donated from the main department I work in. Consequently I came across fog about 4 months back. I previously used DRBL server with clonezilla to image the 34 machines for our Cisco academy network but switched to fog 0.32 before the summer. The no budget aspect means the most powerful machine I could have is a core i5 2500 quad core, 16GB ram, with 3x 1TB drives in RAID5 setup.

Software wise the host OS is Slackware 13.37 x64 and I’m running Virtualbox 4.1 to host 4 virtual PCs. I wasn’t really sure that Virtualbox was up to the job of running a fog server before the summer but after extensive testing under loads it can quite comfortably support my Ubuntu Server 10.04 / fog 0.32 setup.

I just thought I’d add my 2 pennies (2 cents as the Americans say) worth as I’ve not seen many people using Virtualbox to host things like this. I’m very comfortable relying on it though for the conditions I work in with this smaller network.

Anyone else using fog on Virtualbox?? I’d love some feedback on your experiences.[/quote]

this is good to know, i have thought about putting FOG in virtualbox on a server

[Tremiata]

Running on a little HP ML110 with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. So far I think we have imaged around 200 of 1200 machines in a standalone environment. We arent currently using most of the features but this server has helped us greatly with deployments.

[djm79]

Ubuntu 10.10 desktop 64bit 8 gigs of ram and bonded 1 gig nics in a VmWare environment. Managing our three building main campus and 26 branch locations. Storage nodes at each location that provide PXE boot and Samba share for snapins. It’s a complete hands off setup. Our helpdesk can image and deploy software to any computer without having to go to the location. All thanks to the FOG team here this is the best solution with great support.