Two PXE Servers
 

I have been Googling around and haven't really found an answer to my problem. Here is what I am working with. Currently have a Windows Server running Symantec 3com PXE in order to PXE boot PCs and Ghost images back down on our Corporate network. I have over 100 District Office throughout the United States, different states, which I want to enable PXE boot functionality. The DHCP and DNS for all the District Offices get their addresses from the DHCP and DNS servers (Windows 2008R2 servers) in the Corporate Office. Each District Office has a Linux PC (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop SLED) which is running Squid for WCCP caching and the Office uses these for Day One training for new Agents (web-based training). I have the Agent notebook image (ghost image) on all these SLED PCs. What I would like to figure out is if I can turn each on of these PCs into a PXE server for re-imaging Agent notebooks within each Office. If so what would you recommend? The subnet for the District Office is different than the Corporate network. Would it be easier to just change out the PXE server in the Corporate Office and use that one for both the Corporate PCs and District Office PCs? Not sure how that would work with Ghost. Any recommendations? Our Desktop group is also looking at the Windows Imaging File format (WIM).

I guess I am trying to see if anyone has any experience with this, re-imaging PCs in District Offices and if so, how are you going about it? I was thinking clonezilla but then ran across FOG (fogproject.org) but having a little difficulty getting it up and running on SLED. I am looking for simplicity but need the ability to re-image PCs in the District Offices. I was going to try and use rsync to keep the images on all the District Office PCs up-to-date. Current image gets updated maybe quarterly. Almost all the Offices currently have DSL or Cable connection for Internet access.

Thoughts or suggestions?

Use separate VLAN

I think I am further along. I am using Windows Deployment Server which provides PXE services, not by choice. :) Another group is dictating the image format for the Windows 7 notebooks. They like wim and say it is easier to manage.

I am able to plug in an IP helper address on the router so my office has PXE working. It connects back to this WDS box. Now my problem is how to tell this PXE process where to get the image. I want it to get the image from the local PC and not come back to the PXE server which would make the imaging process too slow if not impossible.

Move up to gpxe if possible.