General questions - 4M88 - DistriBrute Frequently Asked Questions

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What are DistriBrute's features and benefits?

Author:: Administrator
Date added:: Sunday, 13 September 2009
Last revised:: Monday, 22 February 2010

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Answer

DistriBrute offers the following benefits:

• Instant download can be guaranteed on all desktops, therefore there are no more unpredictable installations, nor wasted time! By comparison SCCM2007 or SMS2003 may function efficiently within a working day, but be prepared with good coffee for the wait!
• The reinstallations of desktops remain a local process since the WIM image is stored on a separate cache partition. The reinstallation of desktops is therefore much quicker and much more reliable. Each desktop is responsible for the re- installation. A re-installation via multicast demands a new session and generates more traffic and a bigger chance of an installation failure.
• All applications and the OS-Image remain in place during a re-installation. This prevents unnecessary network traffic while the installation of applications starts immediately after the OS has been installed.
• OS-Deployment and OS installation are separate processes. This means that a newly deployed image can be installed at a chosen time.
• Completed downloads can be resumed after a desktop reconnects to the network.
• OS-Image data will be reconstructed in case of hashing errors. Hashing errors are caused by changes in data (because of a bad sector on the hard disk for example). DistriBrute reconstructs the data by copying good fragments of data from the neighbor desktops.
• Provisioning of a desktop re-installation. DistriBrute provides a COM+ component that can be used to offer a provisioned re-installation of the desktop. A selected group of users (Teachers for instance) can do re-installations without being dependent on the IT department.
• DistriBrute is a simple but very powerful tool. There aren’t any difficult installation procedures, and there is no need to spend time or effort with a study course on it.
• Migrations are very simple. Spreading a new WIM image to all desktops is the only thing needed to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7. Thousands of desktops can be reinstalled with the new image at the same time (because all installations are autonomous per desktop).