Snap Deploy, completes, reboots and back to square 1

Hello everyone, I recently bought Ancronis Snap Deploy and Universal Deploy to test remote deployment via a PXE server.

I'm testing with my first client. It connects fine to the PXE server, boots into SD Agent.

I run the deploy , I see progress % on the console..then the computer disappears from view on the console...I assume it's finished and rebooting (as I requested) and I see it does reboot, but nothing has changed, there is still no bootable HDD.

The HDD is unformatted and unpartitioned. Could this be the issue? If it is I suppose I will have to install from a CD/DVD

 

Well I've solved the problem.

I'm a bit disappointed with the Acronis product for not giving me better Error messaging!

The problem was license keys. Neither the sales representative from Acronis nor the User manual (which i printed out and have been constantly referring to) makes it clear that you need 2 SD license keys installed to deploy to 1 machine (1 for the server, 1 for the agent) and 1 UD key for the agent.

Once i put in my second key, everything worked.

My suggestions:

1) Make it clearer in the manual and FAQ's
2) Add error trapping for the lack of license keys on the license server rather than silently rebooting the machine and making the user scratch their head.

My tuppence. Acronis looks like a good product, but solving this niggle would make it excellent.

The Universal Deploy is doing its sysprepping right now....better go and watch it