Restoring from Network Incredibly Slow

bse_college
New Contributor III

Hi folks,

I have a dilemma that I would love some help resolving...
- I have three NetBoot images, one based on OSX10.10.4 with Casper Imaging 9.73, one based on OSX10.11.6 with Casper Imaging 9.93 and the other with OSX10.12.2 with Casper Imaging 9.97
- When I am imaging a single machine the transfer speeds that I get are 98MB/s average for the OSX10.10.4 NetBoot, 35MB/s average with the OSX10.11.6 NetBoot and 33MB/s average with the OSX10.12.2.

In early January I am going to be imaging 500 MacBook Air's. I have three days to do it in.

Should I continue to use the OSX10.10.4 NetBoot or is there something that I can do to sort out the speed issues with the other two NetBoot images?

Thanks in advance!

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

bse_college
New Contributor III

I've got to get imaging so I'm going to stick with the solid NBI and worry about it at a later date.

View solution in original post

5 REPLIES 5

Eigger
Contributor III

May I ask why you need 3 versions of NBI's? In our environment, we gave up on Netbooting and just invest on External SSD drives. We use the Thunderbolt Transcend StoreJet for Mac. We create a small Partition for the NBI and the rest of the Partition for the Packages, named it CasperUSBShare. I use the restorable dmg created on AutoCasperNBI and restore it on the small partition. For the packages, I use Casper Admin, drag the large partition on the File Distribution Points pane and replicate packages. Boot your machines on the External Drive, when casper imaging starts, select local disk, select CasperUSBShare as your Package source. You still of course, need to make sure that the machines are connected to the network so it can reach the JSS for additional Policies and Scripts, and to Join the Domain.

We currently have 6 of 1TB SSD Drives at the moment, and 10 500GB USB 3.0 External Drives. The TB SSD Drives image fast and error free. We plan on buying 20 of 256 or 512 SSD Drives next year.

bse_college
New Contributor III

The OSX10.10.4 is our 'solid' NetBoot option. The other two were testing to see if an ElCapitan or Sierra NetBoot would be 'better', especially given that the version of Casper Imaging on the 10.10.4 NBI is 9.73. Only the 10.10.4 NBI is active at the moment until I can find out what is causing the speed hit.

I love your idea with the external USB. When I'm doing less than four machines I tend to use a bootable USB but not as a replication point. Thanks for explaining!

bentoms
Release Candidate Programs Tester

@bse_college have you put 9.97 on the 10.10 NBI to test & vice versa?

Trying to see if an OS or Imaging issue

bse_college
New Contributor III

Great thinking @bentoms . I'll give it a try and report back.

bse_college
New Contributor III

I've got to get imaging so I'm going to stick with the solid NBI and worry about it at a later date.