It used to be a gold standard and now it has fallen out of use.įor those that continue to use it, it continues to function just as well as it did back in the day. Software like this stands the test of time. The last major feature update was in 2018, but Ghost is definitely still for sale and supported. Norton Ghost was discontinued in 2013 however Ghost lives on as Symantec Ghost which is targeted at the enterprise environment. We routinly image up to 1000 units in a day. Our configuration benchs have the capacity to image 124 units simultaneously using network PKE boot. I work for a managed service provider and my company also operates a staging and configuration wearhouse.

The only good thing is that our customers are so tech illiterate and dependent on this awful software that we are able to charge absurd rates for our services.Ĭontary to popular belief Ghost isn't dead. Serial ports are still common and not everyone is comfortable with new technologies like DHCP because “it’s just another thing that can break.” The biggest thing keeping us attached to it is that the primary POS software we use is dependent on so many settings stored in various locations (the registry, config files and databases) that it all but necessities thick images. We operate in the point of sale space and legacy technology never dies here. My main objection is that ghost is a thick imaging solution which is the antithesis of the direction Microsoft has been moving for more than a decade. We also started mapping drives in windows PE and imaging 'locally' because the legacy protocols used to image work poorly at scale. We have nursed it along by moving it to newer versions of Windows PE so that it we can use modern drivers. My company uses ghost extensively and I hate it. I feel a little weird replying to this post because I feel like you may be a newish hire at my company.

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