[LEFT]Okay so Im going ahead with deploying this strictly as an ISO server, and we will continue use acronis for our images, however we will use the acronis iso instead of removing hdds all the time. Ive configured gpxe, but I have no idea how to share the ISO directory over http: I am a rookie at linux and ive done pretty well so far, but its brick wall time…[/LEFT]

Hello everyone,
I’ve recently joined a laptop service company in christchurch new zealand.
The company has had to move to a temporary location since the earthquakes 18months ago, and are staying put for the time being. Our workflow is in chaos, and im looking to streamline our imaging procedure.

Currently, we burn Diagnostics discs and use them once, and discard, it’s too much hassle to go through mountains of discs to find them.
When we reinstall an OS, say after a warranty hard drive failure, we use discs also, and this can take half a day,
For ultrabooks etc without dvd drives, we remove the hard drive if we have an acronis image, or we use a usb2 cdrom drive. VERY slow.

Each SKU of laptop can have at least 3 images, one 32bit OS, 1 64bit OS, and one diagnostic ISO
each image will have 2 or more partitions, as laptop’s have the hidden recovery partitions…

I am investigating options to use a PXE server of sorts to eliminate cds from the work place, and also enhance transfer speeds!

This needs to be low maintenance once setup, The other employee’s have worked there a long time and have shown no inclination nor need to broaden their horizons to linux, and I don’t want the system to fall over after I leave, I am also not great with Linux myself, but am a student and would like a feather in my cap for my resume later on…

I have no need for the advanced features, just creating images, and deploying them one by one, but we will have a huge library of images…

The ISO and disc images must be able to be dropped into a folder structure, without worrying about editing a menu, and hopefully be able to browse and select ISO or image from the Laptop booting from PXE preferably, but from the web interface alternatively.

Is this software a good candidate for our use, large quantity of images, deployed one at a time, drag and drop new Iso’s for browsing???

also, remote storage, as there is a huge quantity of images, but with lots of indentical data, we are looking at a freenas box to host the images, as ZFS has caching features that will be handy, but more importantly, data deduplication as part of the file system… free nas supports cifs and nfs so I assume this wouldnt be a problem??