Fog Cloning SolutionIn my own experience as a Systems Administrator there is nothing more valuable to an IT department than having a Batman like utility belt of tools, tricks and gadgets to speed and enhance your service level.  One of those tools being a network based computer imaging solution.  For years there have been several enterprise products available such as Symantec’s Altiris, LanDesk and Microsoft’s SMS (Systems Management Server).  However unless you have a budget for such products were pretty much SOL.  Until now of course, FOG is here to help!

FOG is more than just a network based imaging/cloning server.  It has grown into a management solution capable of remotely imaging/cloning, installing/managing printers, tracking user access, installing applications and automatic user log off’s.   If a remote computer gets so badly infected with a virus you can remotely (or locally) boot the computer into a AntiVirus sort of LiveCD environment to remove and cleanse the troubled PC more efficiently.

But the greatest part about it and other Open Source tools. It’s completely FREE!  You’re able to get at the source code and manipulate it if you so wish.  But free, I mean come on.  Have any of you seen the annual bill that comes from Altiris for your licenses?

Don’t get me wrong however.  Altiris, LanDesk and SMS are great products and are capable of great things.  But not all IT departments get the financial love they should leaving the enterprise solutions as just a pipe dream.

Before we get started let me first explain what we’ll be doing in this guide and what you’ll need to start.  Initially FOG can act as a DHCP server or you can bypass that, but you must then configure what ever DHCP server currently in place to point to FOG’s PXE service to allow the network booting function to operate.  I use DD-WRT here in my testing environment which allows for this configuration.

  1. Ubuntu Server (installed and configured. I’ll be demonstrating within VMware,  but this is not a recommended “production” setup since it requires so much I/O from the server when used on a large scale.
  2. A static IP address
  3. Decent amount of storage to hold a few mirrored images for your desktop’s.  Images are compressed but they can still range in the ten’s of gigabytes and up.
  4. FOG  source code found here
  5. If you have a router, you must be able to configure the DNSMasq.  If you intend to use the DHCP server built into the FOG server this is not mandatory.

With that said, lets get into it on the next page!

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