Using Clonezilla Server Edition with multiple multicast restore operations

Question

I run a computer refurbishing operation for a local non-profit I am a part of. I have been looking into using Clonezilla to do network-based image-restoration. I am very interested in the multicast functionality provided by Clonezilla.

I want to do multiple multicast restorations at the same time, but Clonezilla does not currently support that. It uses udpcast (udp-sender/udp-receiver) as its multicast server.

Current it uses a hard-coded IP and port for the multicast server (and client), and I believe that is the only limiting factor to performing multiple multicast restorations simultaneously.

Here is part of the command that is run (with the relevant parameters): udp-sender --interface eth3 --nokbd --mcast-all-addr 241.0.0.1 --portbase 3034 (found in /opt/drbl/sbin/ocs-functions)

Is my diagnosis of the situation correct? is a different port all that is needed?

Thanks,
Brian

Answer 1

Your analysis is correct.

I've used udpcast extensively for disk imaging with a bunch of home-grown tools. You absolutely can run multiple udpcast streams simultaneously by specifying a different argument --portbase. Obviously, you're going to be sharing network bandwidth so expect the potential for degraded performance, but it'll work fine.

Answer 2

Have you checked out fog. It's an open source imaging solution like clonezilla.

They also offer a VM appliance so you can check it out as see if it will work for you.

http://www.fogproject.org/