Symantec to release Ghost 6.5 for enterprises

Symantec this week launched the next version of its enterprise disk cloning software for Windows 2000, Ghost 6.5. After years of private Microsoft recommendations, the company has recently become more overt in its praise of Ghost and the new version is Windows 2000 certified, a fairly rare accomplishment. Ghost allows administrators to quickly reapply disk images to multiple machines, and it can be handy when complicated new software--such as an Office upgrade or Windows service pack--is applied in an enterprise. The new version includes a Boot Wizard, an AutoInstall feature, an enhanced console, and other new and improved features.

In addition to manual disk cloning, Ghost supports a multicasting feature that allows multiple target machines to receive the same image file simultaneously over a TCP/IP network connection. And multicasting is designed to reduce network traffic so that even the largest enterprises can replicate multiple systems in the same time that it would take to replicate one.

Ghost 6.5 will be released later this month. The company also makes a personal edition called Ghost 2000. For more information about Ghost, please visit the Symantec Web site