Deep Freeze alternative
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Cody Horton
September 4, 2014 6:34:55 PM
Hi everyone I hope this is in the right place. Let me start by describing our environment. We have deep freeze installed on about 80 machine (2 labs) this is because these are networking labs and the students need admin rights. Deep Freeze allows us to "revert back" to an image even if the students break the current one. The problem is the machines are frozen so we cannot push out software through SCCM or apply windows updates without doing it in maintenance windows. So we need to be able to revert machines and not be limited when pushing software.
We are looking for alternatives and I was hoping I could get a few suggestions here. Some ideas we thought might work are a VHD, modified for of steady-state, or REG edits to only allow certain things to be run. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help!
We are looking for alternatives and I was hoping I could get a few suggestions here. Some ideas we thought might work are a VHD, modified for of steady-state, or REG edits to only allow certain things to be run. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help!
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drapacioli
September 4, 2014 8:27:01 PM
Cody Horton said:
Hi everyone I hope this is in the right place. Let me start by describing our environment. We have deep freeze installed on about 80 machine (2 labs) this is because these are networking labs and the students need admin rights. Deep Freeze allows us to "revert back" to an image even if the students break the current one. The problem is the machines are frozen so we cannot push out software through SCCM or apply windows updates without doing it in maintenance windows. So we need to be able to revert machines and not be limited when pushing software.We are looking for alternatives and I was hoping I could get a few suggestions here. Some ideas we thought might work are a VHD, modified for of steady-state, or REG edits to only allow certain things to be run. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help!
I will give full disclosure and say I've never used this software, but this sounds like it will accommodate pushing new software out and windows updates "easily": http://www.fortresgrand.com/products/cls/cls.htm Just keep in mind this works on a filesystem level and not a kernel level. I'm no security expert, so maybe you know a little bit more about why that might be important?
Other options could be virtualization software? But I'm not aware of any that will restore their prior state on reboot or logoff, so you're kind of stuck at the same spot there.
You might be able to use an enterprise network monitor and create a whitelist of applications and files, but I'm not sure you can configure that to allow what you need while also supplying sufficient protection, ie from downloads, thumb drives (if you're a university, students will almost always want to use these with lab PCs), or web-based applications that will run in the browser. The whole configuration will probably be more trouble than it's worth in that case, and you won't even have the same level of protection as you do now, which might drive up support calls (and therefore cost)
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Cody Horton said:
Hi everyone I hope this is in the right place. Let me start by describing our environment. We have deep freeze installed on about 80 machine (2 labs) this is because these are networking labs and the students need admin rights. Deep Freeze allows us to "revert back" to an image even if the students break the current one. The problem is the machines are frozen so we cannot push out software through SCCM or apply windows updates without doing it in maintenance windows. So we need to be able to revert machines and not be limited when pushing software.We are looking for alternatives and I was hoping I could get a few suggestions here. Some ideas we thought might work are a VHD, modified for of steady-state, or REG edits to only allow certain things to be run. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help!
If this is a networking lab, you should be able to configure a network boot. Have all of the machines boot from a single disk image and you'll cut your work down by a factor of 80. Then configure each workstation with a small local storage so that student work will persist.
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drapacioli
September 4, 2014 8:36:22 PM
Pinhedd said:
Cody Horton said:
Hi everyone I hope this is in the right place. Let me start by describing our environment. We have deep freeze installed on about 80 machine (2 labs) this is because these are networking labs and the students need admin rights. Deep Freeze allows us to "revert back" to an image even if the students break the current one. The problem is the machines are frozen so we cannot push out software through SCCM or apply windows updates without doing it in maintenance windows. So we need to be able to revert machines and not be limited when pushing software.We are looking for alternatives and I was hoping I could get a few suggestions here. Some ideas we thought might work are a VHD, modified for of steady-state, or REG edits to only allow certain things to be run. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help!
If this is a networking lab, you should be able to configure a network boot. Have all of the machines boot from a single disk image and you'll cut your work down by a factor of 80. Then configure each workstation with a small local storage so that student work will persist.
Wouldn't that be incredibly slow?
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Reply to drapacioli
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drapacioli said:
Pinhedd said:
Cody Horton said:
Hi everyone I hope this is in the right place. Let me start by describing our environment. We have deep freeze installed on about 80 machine (2 labs) this is because these are networking labs and the students need admin rights. Deep Freeze allows us to "revert back" to an image even if the students break the current one. The problem is the machines are frozen so we cannot push out software through SCCM or apply windows updates without doing it in maintenance windows. So we need to be able to revert machines and not be limited when pushing software.We are looking for alternatives and I was hoping I could get a few suggestions here. Some ideas we thought might work are a VHD, modified for of steady-state, or REG edits to only allow certain things to be run. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help!
If this is a networking lab, you should be able to configure a network boot. Have all of the machines boot from a single disk image and you'll cut your work down by a factor of 80. Then configure each workstation with a small local storage so that student work will persist.
Wouldn't that be incredibly slow?
That depends on the particular pre-boot solution that is used. There are PXE solutions available which support boot image checksum and versioning. They should only download a new OS image if a new one is available.
One commercial solution that I was able to find is CCBoot. It'll be a bit expensive at about $900 per month for 80 clients though. There is a free trial available though, I would recommend looking into it to see if it meets your needs.
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drapacioli
September 4, 2014 9:03:39 PM
Pinhedd said:
drapacioli said:
Pinhedd said:
Cody Horton said:
Hi everyone I hope this is in the right place. Let me start by describing our environment. We have deep freeze installed on about 80 machine (2 labs) this is because these are networking labs and the students need admin rights. Deep Freeze allows us to "revert back" to an image even if the students break the current one. The problem is the machines are frozen so we cannot push out software through SCCM or apply windows updates without doing it in maintenance windows. So we need to be able to revert machines and not be limited when pushing software.We are looking for alternatives and I was hoping I could get a few suggestions here. Some ideas we thought might work are a VHD, modified for of steady-state, or REG edits to only allow certain things to be run. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help!
If this is a networking lab, you should be able to configure a network boot. Have all of the machines boot from a single disk image and you'll cut your work down by a factor of 80. Then configure each workstation with a small local storage so that student work will persist.
Wouldn't that be incredibly slow?
That depends on the particular pre-boot solution that is used. There are PXE solutions available which support boot image checksum and versioning. They should only download a new OS image if a new one is available.
One commercial solution that I was able to find is CCBoot. It'll be a bit expensive at about $900 per month for 80 clients though. There is a free trial available though, I would recommend looking into it to see if it meets your needs.
Thank you for explaining, this area is not exactly my area of expertise, but I have a basic knowledge. I was looking at CCBoot as well, but I know we had that at my high school for our CAD workstations and it caused nothing but problems. I don't know if it was the setup or the old version or just really unreliable hardware (it was a bit underpowered for the applications we were using), but the PCs were down a lot with problems, leading to issues getting projects finished during the year.
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Reply to drapacioli
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drapacioli said:
Pinhedd said:
drapacioli said:
Pinhedd said:
Cody Horton said:
Hi everyone I hope this is in the right place. Let me start by describing our environment. We have deep freeze installed on about 80 machine (2 labs) this is because these are networking labs and the students need admin rights. Deep Freeze allows us to "revert back" to an image even if the students break the current one. The problem is the machines are frozen so we cannot push out software through SCCM or apply windows updates without doing it in maintenance windows. So we need to be able to revert machines and not be limited when pushing software.We are looking for alternatives and I was hoping I could get a few suggestions here. Some ideas we thought might work are a VHD, modified for of steady-state, or REG edits to only allow certain things to be run. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help!
If this is a networking lab, you should be able to configure a network boot. Have all of the machines boot from a single disk image and you'll cut your work down by a factor of 80. Then configure each workstation with a small local storage so that student work will persist.
Wouldn't that be incredibly slow?
That depends on the particular pre-boot solution that is used. There are PXE solutions available which support boot image checksum and versioning. They should only download a new OS image if a new one is available.
One commercial solution that I was able to find is CCBoot. It'll be a bit expensive at about $900 per month for 80 clients though. There is a free trial available though, I would recommend looking into it to see if it meets your needs.
Thank you for explaining, this area is not exactly my area of expertise, but I have a basic knowledge. I was looking at CCBoot as well, but I know we had that at my high school for our CAD workstations and it caused nothing but problems. I don't know if it was the setup or the old version or just really unreliable hardware (it was a bit underpowered for the applications we were using), but the PCs were down a lot with problems, leading to issues getting projects finished during the year.
That's a pretty common trend in most high schools regardless of the software used. Students abuse computers to no end, and most school districts can't afford to hire competent technical staff. PICNIC definitely applies.
Of course, you could always try Windows Deployment Services which is available with recent editions of Windows Server
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Cody Horton
September 5, 2014 3:57:23 AM
Pinhedd said:
drapacioli said:
Pinhedd said:
Cody Horton said:
Hi everyone I hope this is in the right place. Let me start by describing our environment. We have deep freeze installed on about 80 machine (2 labs) this is because these are networking labs and the students need admin rights. Deep Freeze allows us to "revert back" to an image even if the students break the current one. The problem is the machines are frozen so we cannot push out software through SCCM or apply windows updates without doing it in maintenance windows. So we need to be able to revert machines and not be limited when pushing software.We are looking for alternatives and I was hoping I could get a few suggestions here. Some ideas we thought might work are a VHD, modified for of steady-state, or REG edits to only allow certain things to be run. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help!
If this is a networking lab, you should be able to configure a network boot. Have all of the machines boot from a single disk image and you'll cut your work down by a factor of 80. Then configure each workstation with a small local storage so that student work will persist.
Wouldn't that be incredibly slow?
That depends on the particular pre-boot solution that is used. There are PXE solutions available which support boot image checksum and versioning. They should only download a new OS image if a new one is available.
One commercial solution that I was able to find is CCBoot. It'll be a bit expensive at about $900 per month for 80 clients though. There is a free trial available though, I would recommend looking into it to see if it meets your needs.
Hey thanks for the input. Is this sorta like a VDI setup. I do not have a lot of knowledge with it but it's defiantly an option.
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Cody Horton
September 5, 2014 4:03:39 AM
drapacioli said:
Cody Horton said:
Hi everyone I hope this is in the right place. Let me start by describing our environment. We have deep freeze installed on about 80 machine (2 labs) this is because these are networking labs and the students need admin rights. Deep Freeze allows us to "revert back" to an image even if the students break the current one. The problem is the machines are frozen so we cannot push out software through SCCM or apply windows updates without doing it in maintenance windows. So we need to be able to revert machines and not be limited when pushing software.We are looking for alternatives and I was hoping I could get a few suggestions here. Some ideas we thought might work are a VHD, modified for of steady-state, or REG edits to only allow certain things to be run. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help!
I will give full disclosure and say I've never used this software, but this sounds like it will accommodate pushing new software out and windows updates "easily": http://www.fortresgrand.com/products/cls/cls.htm Just keep in mind this works on a filesystem level and not a kernel level. I'm no security expert, so maybe you know a little bit more about why that might be important?
Other options could be virtualization software? But I'm not aware of any that will restore their prior state on reboot or logoff, so you're kind of stuck at the same spot there.
You might be able to use an enterprise network monitor and create a whitelist of applications and files, but I'm not sure you can configure that to allow what you need while also supplying sufficient protection, ie from downloads, thumb drives (if you're a university, students will almost always want to use these with lab PCs), or web-based applications that will run in the browser. The whole configuration will probably be more trouble than it's worth in that case, and you won't even have the same level of protection as you do now, which might drive up support calls (and therefore cost)
Hi drapacioli thanks for the reply. I'll look into your software solution. Thanks for all the replies.
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Cody Horton said:
Pinhedd said:
drapacioli said:
Pinhedd said:
Cody Horton said:
Hi everyone I hope this is in the right place. Let me start by describing our environment. We have deep freeze installed on about 80 machine (2 labs) this is because these are networking labs and the students need admin rights. Deep Freeze allows us to "revert back" to an image even if the students break the current one. The problem is the machines are frozen so we cannot push out software through SCCM or apply windows updates without doing it in maintenance windows. So we need to be able to revert machines and not be limited when pushing software.We are looking for alternatives and I was hoping I could get a few suggestions here. Some ideas we thought might work are a VHD, modified for of steady-state, or REG edits to only allow certain things to be run. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help!
If this is a networking lab, you should be able to configure a network boot. Have all of the machines boot from a single disk image and you'll cut your work down by a factor of 80. Then configure each workstation with a small local storage so that student work will persist.
Wouldn't that be incredibly slow?
That depends on the particular pre-boot solution that is used. There are PXE solutions available which support boot image checksum and versioning. They should only download a new OS image if a new one is available.
One commercial solution that I was able to find is CCBoot. It'll be a bit expensive at about $900 per month for 80 clients though. There is a free trial available though, I would recommend looking into it to see if it meets your needs.
Hey thanks for the input. Is this sorta like a VDI setup. I do not have a lot of knowledge with it but it's defiantly an option.
It's not VDI. VDI is a throwback to the old mainframe days where a dumb terminal is used to remotely administrate a server. PXE network booting loads a small boot image from a file server and this boot image can then perform a large number of tasks including downloading a larger image to disk, downloading a larger image to memory (ramdisk style), performing maintenance, etc...
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sam_horizondatasys
October 3, 2014 4:30:55 PM
Cody Horton said:
Hi everyone I hope this is in the right place. Let me start by describing our environment. We have deep freeze installed on about 80 machine (2 labs) this is because these are networking labs and the students need admin rights. Deep Freeze allows us to "revert back" to an image even if the students break the current one. The problem is the machines are frozen so we cannot push out software through SCCM or apply windows updates without doing it in maintenance windows. So we need to be able to revert machines and not be limited when pushing software.We are looking for alternatives and I was hoping I could get a few suggestions here. Some ideas we thought might work are a VHD, modified for of steady-state, or REG edits to only allow certain things to be run. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help!
Hey Cody! My name's Sam and I work at Horizon DataSys. Full disclosure.
I just wanted to let you know we have a software you might be into called RollBack Rx and Drive Vaccine. Both of these will do what you need and more, including applying software changes and allowing for automated updates. If you want to try it out send me a message and I'll set you up. If not, thank you for your time.
Have a great day!
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