Fog multicasting request
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Where a school district and in the past we where use to using Ghost and multitasking with Ghost.
To multicast a tech would setup a session on a computer and name the session and then you would go to the computers to be imaged and type in the session name and when all computers had joined the session then you would click go and those computers would get imaged.
I understand with Fog multitasking, you register the device with the fog server and then you go onto the fog server and create a group and then you have to select the computers you want to multitask and add them to that group.
Is there anyway to have it to where after the computer has registered itself you could have a menu that says have a session you would like to join and then you could type in the session name and it would automatically add those computers to that multitask group.
Then when are techs are in the field I can tell them I created a session called imag46, that’s the session you need to join.
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While fog is designed to be a free alternative to Ghost, one must remember that it is not ghost.
The reason this isn’t supported is because we dynamically create the udp-sender command based on the taskings needed. Meaning, if your group multicast task has 47 hosts in it, it creates a task designed for 47 hosts. There is no clicking “go”, once all 47 hosts connect the task will begin.
I don’t think, with the way we’re doing multicast tasks now, that we could ever get it in such a fashion.
If you’re creating the session anyway, wouldn’t it just be as easy to tell the techs in the field to start this lab of computers?
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[quote=“Tom Elliott, post: 32439, member: 7271”]While fog is designed to be a free alternative to Ghost, one must remember that it is not ghost.
The reason this isn’t supported is because we dynamically create the udp-sender command based on the taskings needed. Meaning, if your group multicast task has 47 hosts in it, it creates a task designed for 47 hosts. There is no clicking “go”, once all 47 hosts connect the task will begin.
I don’t think, with the way we’re doing multicast tasks now, that we could ever get it in such a fashion.
If you’re creating the session anyway, wouldn’t it just be as easy to tell the techs in the field to start this lab of computers?[/quote]
Thanks for the reply Tom. I love Fog and will continue to use it.
I’m OK with not having a go button and having the task begin once the 47 hosts have connected.
We’ve imaged 913 computers without using multicast. Basically I have a list of 913 machines I get to scroll through.
Are summer work consists of hooking the computers back up and imaging them. So with this method I would have to call the tech at that building and say can you E-mail me all 60 host names that you want to multicast. I then would have to look through all 913 registered computers and one by one select the 60 I need and move them to my multicast group and then they would multicast.
I just want to make things easier and faster for me to where after they’ve registered the computer on there end then they could have another menu that would say join multicast session and they could type that session name in and it would automatically add them to that multicast group.
They don’t have access to the fog server.
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Why don’t you setup predefined groups, and why are the hosts constantly having to be “re-registered”?
If you use familiar naming conventions it makes life easier, one in FOG and two in general.
Where I work, we using a naming convention of:
BHS-B104-01The BHS stands for Burlington High School. The B104 stands for B-wing room 104 and the 01 is the number of the system in that room.
If there’s multiples I can just search the identifier needed. Just as BHS-B104 in the search item. If I needed to multicast, I could using those same steps, create the group and deploy the task.
I hope you understand, you do what you do, but why do it in such a disorganized way?
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[quote=“danh30, post: 32450, member: 24977”]Thanks for the reply Tom. I love Fog and will continue to use it.
I’m OK with not having a go button and having the task begin once the 47 hosts have connected.
We’ve imaged 913 computers without using multicast. Basically I have a list of 913 machines I get to scroll through.
Are summer work consists of hooking the computers back up and imaging them. So with this method I would have to call the tech at that building and say can you E-mail me all 60 host names that you want to multicast. I then would have to look through all 913 registered computers and one by one select the 60 I need and move them to my multicast group and then they would multicast.
I just want to make things easier and faster for me to where after they’ve registered the computer on there end then they could have another menu that would say join multicast session and they could type that session name in and it would automatically add them to that multicast group.
They don’t have access to the fog server.[/quote]
I understand where you are coming from. There is something in the works so that we may be able to let those techs access a restricted set of fog menus so they can issues tasks themselves, but it’s still in the works.
However, in revision 1731 Tom implemented the option to have quick registered hosts auto join to a group, this could allow you the opportunity to have the tech register the machines to the server, and you choose the group at the time, then assign an image for the entire group and finally begin a multicast session to that group and let the techs turn the machines on.
I realize this isn’t an ideal solution, but a possible work around.
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We are just so busy right now, we don’t have time to create all of those groups. This is are first year using Fog and also the year the image is Windows 7 and not Windows Xp. We’ve only been using fog for a couple of months. Alot of are machines have never been imaged with Fog so there having to go through the full registration. Are naming convention is a little different are’s is two digits for the building identifier so my building is Baptiste so BA then 3 digits for the room number so room 7 007 and then the 7 digit service tag and then either a S at the end for student or a T at the end for teacher.
So a host name might look like BA007G1SKJB1T
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If you create the groups and tell your text to join the system to that group during registration time then you can just task the group
