Warning about latest Acronix Snap Deploy version 3292
I can see that acronis in the sticky suggest that customers always uses the latest build which
still is 3292.
I can tell you that this is gonna leave you in a world of pain. 3292 does not work at all. Stick
with version 3235 which works fine. I know this cause i use it daily for large deployments on many different hardware based computers. Also other users report same huge problems with 3292 as i did.
Regretfully Acronis denies that it is problems with the 3292 version and claims that they have not recivied any complaints about problems with 3292. and i have this claim as a logfile from acronis.
Until acronis officially cave inn and admit failure on 3292 I resrve the right to warn other customers about 3292 version.
I can see that acronis in the sticky suggest that customers always uses the latest build which
still is 3292.
I can tell you that this is gonna leave you in a world of pain. 3292 does not work at all. Stick
with version 3235 which works fine. I know this cause i use it daily for large deployments on many different hardware based computers. Also other users report same huge problems with 3292 as i did.
Regretfully Acronis denies that it is problems with the 3292 version and claims that they have not recivied any complaints about problems with 3292. and i have this claim as a logfile from acronis.
Until acronis officially cave inn and admit failure on 3292 I resrve the right to warn other customers about 3292 version.
How do you get a hold of Version 3235 ? Do you have a link to it somewhere ?
Ok I got it just copied the URL by right clicking the link for 3292 and replaced 3292 with 3235 in notepad and it worked :)
Hello all,
Could you please let us know the details of issue so we can investigate and resolve it?
Tor Erik Larsen, could you please provide me with the exact sequence of actions that lead to the issue you report, so that I can try to reproduce it?
We are looking forward to hearing back from you at your earliest convenience.
Thank you.
Alexander and Oleg:
I appriciate your concern. But i have been in contact with your support department and in detailed described my problems with 3292. And there is really no details needed to reproduce
the errors. I have in my lab HP XW 4400,6400,9400 - ETC HP laptops - Dell computers and what not. I also use several different switches. Common to all my equipment is that 3292
fails to deploy trough PXE in 90% of the cases. And this happens to all different hardware. As soon as i use the 3235 client everything works perfect. Thats for now good enough evidence for me that 3292 version has some serious flaws.
Beside you support dep denied any problems what so ever with 3292. I bet other user can confirm same behaviour in their labs with 3292.
The client does not get IP adresses from the DHCP server, a few one does rarely get one. but no matter what deploy fails usually right away or 10-20 percent complete.
Since the 3235 works perfect on the same exact equipment i have concluded with that 3292 is buggy.
I'm concerned that this issue could be what I am going thru. I am using the trial version of the Snap Deploy for Servers.
I have created an image. I have created a scheduled deploy of the image. The task starts, the WOL boots the machine, but it boots right into the Windows Server. When I had the DHCP Option 60 in the DHCP Configuration, it wouldn't hand off an IP Address, so I took that option out.
I'm only testing this right now on a small 8 port switch at my desk...it is not connected to our true network yet.
I followed the instructions to have the WOL setting on the destination pc set to boot to the HDD.
Hello Curtis,
Thank you for using Acronis Corporate Products
First of all we should check the functionality of PXE Server (this can be the reason of the issue). Could you please try to boot the system from PXE Server and let us know the results? This will help to localize the issue.
Thank you.
Hi,
I ran in the same issue with DHCP on the client. The client could not get the correct address.
The work around was to set the ip address manualy.
Have a good day.
al
Hello all,
Curtis, could you please let is know the current state of issue?
Andre Lepage, yes, sometimes our program is unable to get IP address from DHCP due its specifics, so the simplest workaround is just configure settings manually.
Thank you.
i just want to add I also am having major problems with build 3292. I wish i had of read this forum post before i lost two weeks in testing and pulling my hair out.
Now I got to the point where I thought I had it sorted on my lab PC's, so then tried with one of my clients PC's before I try to deploy to over 100 and in no uncertain terms it killed the PC.
It all deployed properly and everything was fine, then the computer restarted and came up with BOOTMNGR missing error. Wont even image from standalone client. Not the one that came with it or the one the live chat guy tried to give me.
I tried pushing out the old image to the PC but now it wont even pick up the PXE boot like it did before.
So stressed trying to fix this, only have a week left until I have to image all those PC's
You can add me to the list. We had an isolated PXE related deployment problem with the previous build, but almost all other functions worked smoothly. Acronis tech support insisted we upgrade to 3292 in order to troubleshoot the problem, and it had no effect on the problem. The problem was eventually solved by an engineer modifying the Acronis boot OS and me replacing some files after installation.
Following that, the orginal PXE problem was resolved; however, with 3292 now installed, various problems cropped up. All of my backup image files created prior to 3292 were no longer recognized as valid files. Very inconsistent PXE booting, lots of seemingly random failures to obtain an IP, along with failures to load the Acronis Snap Deploy agent OS at various stages (computer just restarted automatically during the load). Boot media created with 3292 is finicky at best; it often will not recognize local USB drives, and more often, even when it does see the drive, it will not write to it. It also will not write to a USB stick, period (insists there is not enough space available on the drive, but this is just not the case).
Again on with Acronis support, first-level support yielded no results. I noticed that build 3329 was now posted and one of the documented 'fixes' was my "older backup images are not recognized' problem. I installed and re-installed, and that one problem was fixed.
However, now the Master Image Creator doesn't work. Any image I've tried to create since 3329 does not validate and will not deploy (computer reboots as soon as deployment is attempted; as well, if you try to verify the image, the image checker module just hangs/freezes, no error reported or logged).
It seems build 3292 was a cluster-you-know-what and 3329 isn't much better. I spent half a day with support yesterday on my 3329 problems to no avail. I spend the second half of the day plus some overtime cloning the HDDs I had to deploy with Ghost.
I heard back from a second level tech and our current deployment problems for build 3329 are solved - in so far as a re-installation and re-building of all my templates can be considered a 'solution.'
Images (backup tib files) still will not validate, but at least they deploy. At least to WXP machines. Windows 7 Images result in the OS reporting that it can't load when the PC reboots after deployment. But I suppose that's a topic for another thread.