I have had no problems with Ghost 10 when I create an image onto a network server. I map a drive, point to the server and the specific folder, then bam, in 15 minutes there's an image of the computer on the server.

However, now that Ghost 12 is installed, this process takes a good hour just to do one computer. Also, if I decide to ghost four computers at once, say goodbye to the rest of the day.

I talked to the live help from Symantec, but he only gave me a couple of options: clear the temp folders and set the network throttling under the performance setting. None of this helped so I have decided to try my luck with some forums.

Any ideas?

-Taylor

Have you tried creating your backup image to a local usb2 hard drive?  Just to verify it is the network.

Besides the network throttling, what is your Ghost 12 performance setting?  Tasks/Options/Performance.  My slider is all the way to FAST setting.

Another long shot idea:  Instead of creating a mapped drive using your pc: from the server create a shared folder (such as GhostBU) on the server with write options to Everyone.  Change your Ghost 12 backup definition settings to browse and point to the fully qualified name, not a drive letter.

John. wrote on Aug 14^th, 2007 at 8:38am:

Have you tried creating your backup image to a local usb2 hard drive?  Just to verify it is the network.

Yes. I created a backup on the computer itself and it only took about 6 minutes.


John. wrote on Aug 14^th, 2007 at 8:38am:

Besides the network throttling, what is your Ghost 12 performance setting?  Tasks/Options/Performance.  My slider is all the way to FAST setting.

Mine is set to FAST also.


John. wrote on Aug 14^th, 2007 at 8:38am:

Another long shot idea:  Instead of creating a mapped drive using your pc: from the server create a shared folder (such as GhostBU) on the server with write options to Everyone.  Change your Ghost 12 backup definition settings to browse and point to the fully qualified name, not a drive letter.

I'll try some things similar to this. Currently, when Ghost 12 is creating a backup to the server, the destination is showing up as \\servername\etc\etc and not the drive letter. I am actually thinking that this is the problem, but I have no idea how to fix it.

I am going to keep testing things when I find time. Thanks for the reply.

Marmot wrote on Aug 14^th, 2007 at 5:08pm:

I'll try some things similar to this. Currently, when Ghost 12 is creating a backup to the server, the destination is showing up as \\servername\etc\etc and not the drive letter. I am actually thinking that this is the problem, but I have no idea how to fix it.

Right Click on the backup definition, click edit settings.  When you get to the location for the backup file, browse over your network to the correct remote folder.

I'm really surprised that it was fast with Ghost 10 but not Ghost 12.  I suppose Ghost 12 could be initiating network traffic differently.

I am still not sure what's up. Ghost 10.0 will create an image in 12-15 minutes over the network onto a server. Ghost 12.0 takes about 2 hours.

I have found that the path with Ghost 10.0 and 12.0 are the exact same. Symantec fixed a lot of the slow things in the recovery disk with 12.0, but they screwed something up with imaging over the network.

:'( x 10

Marmot,

I did a test for you. Ghost 12 created an image of the C: drive to a another partition on the same HD. Standard compression, no verify, Fast Performance. Image was 2.31 GB, time taken 5:45.

Same computer imaged over the network, 100 Mbps with crossover cable, to another desktop. Same settings. Time taken 5:10.

Network performance seems OK on my computers. I rarely do it this way so I don't have any clever answers.

Marmot, given the results from Brian (thanks Brian...nice test), I would recommend the following:

Concentrate on verifying the network performance parameters of both pc's.  In particular make sure they are the same for some of the TCPIP values, especially TCP Receive Window (RWIN) and MTU.

There are several tools to verify and analyze these and optimize them.  Look on Google, but one I have used is SpeedGuide.net

http://www.speedguide.net/analyzer.php

Thanks for the test Brian. I can't seem to find a crossover cable and my tools to build a cable are MIA.

Thanks for the replies guys. I have replaced both of the switches at our workstations with Gigabit switches and am going to proceed with some of those network tests.

Marmot wrote on Aug 30^th, 2007 at 11:56am:

I have replaced both of the switches at our workstations with Gigabit switches and am going to proceed with some of those network tests.

Did you verify the RWIN size parameter of each computer?  What value are they?

Look for DrTCP in addition to other link to see it.

Default TCP Receive Window (RWIN) = 65535

That is for the server. I will run the test on the production machines once I get more on the tables.

Marmot wrote on Aug 30^th, 2007 at 12:38pm:

Default TCP Receive Window (RWIN) = 65535  That is for the server. I will run the test on the production machines once I get more on the tables.

That one is not bad, but I would think for a server it could be bigger.  Another nice tool is from www.dslreports.com called Tweak Tester.  You may have to register on the website, but it is a great website with lots of great networking info and forums.

http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks

Run that on the server and client pc's to see what it says.