Symantec Ghost 8.0 Provides Customers Comprehensive Pc Management Solution
Symantec Ghost Reduces IT Costs By Accelerating Windows Migration And Streamlining Configuration Management Tasks
Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC), the world leader in Internet security, today announced Symantec Ghost 8.0 Corporate
Edition, a PC management solution that now offers inventory and local cloning enhancements to save IT administrators
valuable time. Symantec Ghost 8.0 Corporate Edition assists in reducing IT costs by providing customers an effective
solution for operating system deployment, software distribution and back-up and disaster recovery.
Ghost 8.0 Corporate Edition introduces a new hardware and software inventory feature that allows customers to manage
hardware and software inventories within their networks from a central location. IT administrators are able to ease OS
migration tasks by creating “Dynamic Folders” to manage a group of target PCs based upon hardware or software
attributes. Symantec Ghost 8.0 Corporate Edition also now provides a client staging area that enables customers to
reduce network bandwidth by keeping a local backup and recovery image, thereby eliminating the need to repeatedly push
images over the network.
“Ghost 8.0 Corporate Edition allows customers to drastically reduce the cost of deploying and managing servers, desktops
and laptops within the enterprise environment,” said Thom Bailey, group product manager, Symantec Corp. “Symantec Ghost
continues its market and technological leadership by offering many capabilities that make it one of the most
comprehensive PC management and software deployment solutions available for enterprise environments.”
Symantec Ghost 8.0 Corporate Edition is an easy-to-use, integrated solution that provides operating system deployment,
configuration, computer migration and software deployment across hardware platforms and operating system types. The
solution offers IT administrators the ability to deploy or restore an OS image or application onto a PC in minutes and
easily migrate individual user settings and profiles to customise the PC.
Symantec Ghost 8.0 includes several new features designed to enhance PC deployment and configuration management
functionality in enterprise environments: Hardware/Software Inventory – Customers can manage hardware and software
inventory from a centralised console and create detailed reports from customisable views. Enables IT administrators to
design provisioning tasks based on specific client attributes. Client Staging Area – A designated repository that can be
dynamically created on managed PCs which provides the ability to launch and execute contents locally, store whole disk
images, software “hot fixes” and user profiles. Contents may be preserved during a cloning or restore procedure to
ensure an “onboard” recovery solution for every PC. Multicast File Transfer – Allows an IT administrator to send and
execute individual files or critical security-related “hot fixes” to multiple recipients simultaneously. Microsoft
Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) Support – Includes a 32-bit version of Ghost and GhostCast Server designed and
certified for the Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) as well as for Windows 200 and Windows XP.
External Media Support – Provides support for direct cloning to supported USB, Firewire and recordable DVD external
drives and devices. Enhanced File System Support – Includes the ability to read and write images to and from NTFS
partitions. Ghost 8.0 also provides full LILO and GRUB support for the EXT2 and EXT3 Linux file systems.
Availability Symantec Ghost 8.0 Corporate Edition will be available in Asia Pacific late November 2003 through
Symantec’s network of distributors and resellers. For additional product information, please visit www.symantec.com. To
obtain licensing information or to locate a reseller, visit http://enterprisesecurity.symantec.com/license on the World
Wide Web.