# Symantec Ghost Solution Suite Reviews **Vendor:** Broadcom **Category:** [OS Imaging & Deployment Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/os-imaging-deployment) **Average Rating:** 3.7/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 15 ## About Symantec Ghost Solution Suite Symantec Ghost Solutions Suite is an industry leading and award winning solution for imaging and deploying desktops, laptops, tablets, and servers. From a single management console, you can quickly and easily migrate to the latest operating systems, inventory machines, deploy software, and perform custom configurations across multiple hardware platforms and OS types including Windows, Mac, and Linux. Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 3.1 includes the Altiris Deployment Solution 6.9 console and its core capabilities while adding key functionality from Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 including Ghost Cast Server, DeployAnywhere, Recovery Kit, and a streamlined no-cost database installation. ## Symantec Ghost Solution Suite Reviews ### 1. Ghost Solution Suite is Awesome Imaging Recovery **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Imran G. | Desktop Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 14, 2022 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Ghost Solution Suite is easy to deploy on a network and can be controlled centrally through a management console; it saves a lot of time to manage and monitor; we can also create the scheduled job from the console and monitor them. **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** In totality, it is perfect software for all the required features, but performance-wise, it works better when restoring on a stand-alone device than in a network, which must be improved. **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ghost Solution Suit saves lots of time and effort. The restoration process is simple; even less experienced people can restore the system handily. Management console make the administrator's job effortless. It works for servers and desktops alike, which means less downtime in case of some mishaps. ### 2. Need support for imaging solution **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Girishkumar A. | System admin **Reviewed Date:** March 03, 2021 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** It's user friendly Immediate support Cost effective **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** I have not used this tool now I can't describe it **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have 879 machines which are need to migrate with windows 10 os. Hope this tool will reduce my burden ### 3. Symantec Ghost is a good product but could be better! **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 05, 2019 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** It was very helpful with getting our yearly computer replacements done! Quickly! **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** The use of images on different types of machines was not very good! Getting different drivers folded into the mix was not an easy task! **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** Upgrading or replacing or reimaging machines has been made easier. ### 4. Easily manages hundreds of computers **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew B. | IT Services Client Group, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2018 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Ghost Solutions Suite management console makes it easy to manage hundreds of computers. It works well with our remote management remote desktop software, Bomgar. You can right click on a computer, and easily open Bomgar to that specific page. **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** The User Login Tracking is sometimes unreliable. Sometimes it can claim that it is not logged in, but in reality a user is logged in. Because of this, it can make it difficult to deploy scripts that have user intervention or ones that require a reboot. We utilize an internal tool to work with User Tracking that relies on login/logout scripts. The Ghost Solutions Suite (GSS) also takes a while to refresh information. If more than one user is refreshing at a time, it can take a couple of minutes for it to refresh and load the information you are looking for. **Recommendations to others considering Symantec Ghost Solution Suite:** It's quite slow at times. When the Ghost Solutions Suite has to communicate back to the server, it can take a while to refresh. Make sure to set the "Auto Refresh time" under Tools -> Options to a large number. If this is not set, it will freeze up other cowerkers Ghost window. **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** The Ghost Solutions Suite (GSS) makes it easy to deploy scripts and tasks to computers without having to manually interact with computers. It makes it easy to deploy tasks on off-hours, such as at 2AM. You can schedule tasks to kick off without any user intervention. ### 5. Seamless experience for protecting PC **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 07, 2018 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Great protection without even thinking about administration. **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** From an end user perspective i have found nothing to complain about in the years we have been using it. Each time I've asked my admin if they want to switch they prefer to stay with Symantec **Recommendations to others considering Symantec Ghost Solution Suite:** total end user security and ease of administration makes this a great product suite. **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** Consolidated end user securities and easy administration from network administrator. ### 6. Ghost Solutions always a good decision **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Telecommunications | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2018 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Ghost solutions by Symantec has been our company's go to for our corporate drive imaging since the early 2000s and we haven't wavered once since. **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** There is nothing that we dislike about ghost solutions. **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ghost Solutions Suite provides our organization with peace of mind with ensuring data images are up to date in the event of system issues. ### 7. Excellent product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 22, 2018 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** broad functionality. Good system support. Long time user of this software. Like the customization and script usage. **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Product updates and technical support can be slow. **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** The ability to streamline deployments of new hardware. ### 8. It wa enjoyable. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Cosmetics | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** I like the ease-of-use. I also like the support of services. **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** The isn't anything that I dislike. I'm fine with everything that is offered. **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it for my IT services, and my business management. ### 9. A Very Strong and Customisable Imaging Platform **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2017 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** The current version GSS 3.1 MP5 has seen a good level of development in the past few years and comes off the back of Deployment Solution. The toolset is highly customizable and recent versions have brought in support for UEFI BIOS and the capability to support multiple pre-boot environments. The biggest strength of the software is probably the community support around it. Symantec host a large forum with a wealth of information and documentation, assistance with issues is very forth coming. Support is available for all major OS's through Agents and local folders on the client can be used to store images and packages, reducing strain on the network while running tasks. Deployments can be fully automated, allowing for zero-touch imaging. **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Support for Mac OS is very limited. There are currently no options for imaging Macs but an Agent can be installed, allowing further tasks to be ran from the console. The tools for Mac OS have improved but there is still a long way to go. There are multiple other products that do this better and provide a much more complete toolset. **Recommendations to others considering Symantec Ghost Solution Suite:** Very robust platform that is highly customizable. Support for script tasks (Powershell, CMD etc.) allows for any task to be automated. There are a number of tools allowing for building OS and package deployments, along with support for multiple Pre-boot environments and UEFI. Very good community support on Symantec's Connect forums. **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** Imaging across a network with multiple sites and subnets. IP helpers are required, as should be expected, and multicast allows for large deployments. Once setup, the system is very simple to use and has allowed for a small team to manage a large estate. ### 10. Not a good product **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 01, 2017 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Centralized console. Easy way to deploy agent. Lot of different tasks and remote managing features. Which has already been said and agree **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** This is the up most worst suite that I ever deployed. I do not recommend it for corporate computer imaging. Absolutely horrible. Multiple issues with getting the client software to communicate with the server. and before you deal with that setting up the altris express SQL DB is a royal pain. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS PRODUCT. **Recommendations to others considering Symantec Ghost Solution Suite:** DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** Absolutely none went with Macrium Reflect mush better software. I would also highly consider Acronis Enterprise. At least they got it together with out all the fancy who do. ### 11. Ghost Solution Suite 3.1 **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 13, 2016 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Moving from Altiris DS6.9 has been a smooth transition as the interface largely remains unchanged although a few things under the hood have changed. It didn't take very long to get a test server up and running and some of our old jobs ported across for testing builds of our latest generation of hardware. **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** We've encountered a few bugs with this, particular experiencing agent crashes on clients connecting from automation. Although that said feeding back these issues has resulted in a fix so the product is becoming more and more stable. **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** We need to be able to deploy machines easily and reliably, more importantly we need users with little or no training to be able to do this and through various customisations and the power built in tools we've got a robust build solution which requires little effort from the person deploying the workstation. ### 12. Easy to use to get users back up and runing. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2016 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** It's a good solution to make a standard based image with what we need. Using sysprep, we can deploy a standard drive with all software needed in no time to any user who has issues with a system that has completely gone down. **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Ghost has some issues with drivers on dell laptops. Hard to get ghost boot to work correctly via network. **Recommendations to others considering Symantec Ghost Solution Suite:** Preform lots of test and understand how this software functions. **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** N/A ### 13. Massive use of Ghost Solution Suite 3.0 **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrea Lorenzo C. | Technical Specialist, Logistics and Supply Chain, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2016 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Centralized console. Easy way to deploy agent. Lot of different tasks and remote managing features. SQL based database, so you can get more info with a SQL query. Symantec support in case of issue. **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** There isn't a way to import a list of computers whom assign a task. Import / export is too poor, need to run external SQL query to have a report. **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have created several groups of machines where run different tasks; for example Finance tasks for Finance machines I change the configuration for custom applications when is necessary. I upgrade or deploy software. ### 14. A solid and highly customisable computer provisioning tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 04, 2015 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Ghost Solution Suite 3 highly responsive deployment tool for Windows, Mac and Linux. Coming from Altiris DS6.9, we found this a very easy product to get up and running -took about an hour. Best feature is the live feedback with the deployment agent. This means that when you assign tasks to computers you pretty much instantly get a response and can see in the console whether the task is completed yet and what the status is. The Win32 console means no need to wait for sluggish web page refreshes. There is something quite cool about dropping an imaging task on a lap of computers and then see them all reboot into the imaging environment, in sync, right in front of you. With GSS3, jobs can be parameterised. When creating jobs, you can create parameters which refer directly to computer attributes in the underlying Microsoft SQL database. This allows the same job to do slightly different things on different computers. For example, you can have a script to install drivers which uses the model information to target the correct section in a driver library. Or create a task to deploy VPN software which will only proceed with the install if it finds it's being executed on a laptop. The level of automation which can be achieved is immense. And should you get stuck, there is a lot of community support on the Symantec Connect website that I've found incredibly useful over the years. **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Symantec can drop or replace functionality with little warning. You have to read the release notes with each version update rather carefully to be sure that something you rely on hasn't been binned. The 32-bit consoles currently do not possess an 'idle' mode. As open consoles poll the backend database rather frequently, you have to consider carefully how to manage the SQL load in environments where you give many techs console access. **Recommendations to others considering Symantec Ghost Solution Suite:** When starting out, go to Symantec Connect website for advice and tips. Many people have likely already done what you have in mind so use that collective hive mind! **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** We need to be able to deploy machines in a self-service style at desk quickly and reliably. The customisation possibilities with the product means we can tweak the out-of-box processes to give detailed progress reporting both at the console and visibly on the machine itself. The main business benefit is that the admin (me) doesn't need to be aware of techs executing deployments -I don't need to be involved beyond making the jobs available. The product lends itself well to being honed into an imaging-as-a-service framework. ### 15. GSS 3.0 - upgraded to and compared to DS 6.9 **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jan T. | Principal Desktop Infrastructure Architect, Logistics and Supply Chain, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2016 **What do you like best about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Simplicity and intuitivity. With little experience you can do a lot: Check inventory, Deploy SW, Tune configuration Of course, well configured imaging is another story... **What do you dislike about Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?** Lack of integration with SMP infrastructure (it used to be in NS6) I am also missing Web-based console (it used to be in DS6) **Recommendations to others considering Symantec Ghost Solution Suite:** You you were happy using DS6.9 - just upgrade to GSS3.0 **What problems is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite solving and how is that benefiting you?** Supporting local users, deploy SW on demand and verify proper configuration on client ## Symantec Ghost Solution Suite Discussions - [How does Symantec Ghost work?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/symantec-ghost-solution-suite-how-does-symantec-ghost-work) - [What is Symantec Ghost standard tools?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-symantec-ghost-standard-tools) - [What is the use of Ghost software?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/symantec-ghost-solution-suite-what-is-the-use-of-ghost-software) - [What is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-symantec-ghost-solution-suite) - [View Symantec Ghost Solution Suite pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/symantec-ghost-solution-suite/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-05+18%3A27%3A58+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=eb5b9b05-0ec2-4cdb-8a24-e8efab2b1931&secure%5Btoken%5D=03deea4f3e34a14b2de757c4fcce92d4e212582e3475eeefbe707dd72e82fe3a&format=llm_user) ## Symantec Ghost Solution Suite Features **Administration** - Compression - Automation - Web Interface - Administration Console **Deployment** - Device Variety - OS Variety - Deployment Methods **Imaging** - Remote Imaging - Offline imaging - Online imaging ## Top Symantec Ghost Solution Suite Alternatives - [Clonezilla](https://www.g2.com/products/clonezilla/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (15 reviews) - [SmartDeploy](https://www.g2.com/products/smartdeploy/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (145 reviews) - [Macrium Backup & Restore](https://www.g2.com/products/macrium-backup-restore/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (88 reviews)