# The Design and Implementation of a Novel Open Source Massive Deployment System
## 6 Conclusions and Future Work  
In this paper, a novel system architecture was proposed and developed in an open source manner to support single machine backup and recovery, massive deployment of disks in a computer, and massive deployment in large-scale computers. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first open source system deployment program that can provide these three types of functions. In addition, this system deployment software can support various OSs, including Linux, MacOS, MS Windows and FreeBSD. A comparison between Clonezilla live with other commercial proprietary or open source software was provided. Regardless, whether considered through the aspect of the file system being support, the capability of starting from a live OS, the support of massive deployment of disks in a computer, and the provision of the client-server mechanism for massive deployment in large-scale computers, the proposed mass deployment system is a better choice. The experiments that were performed by deploying a Linux system to 1 to 30 USB flash drives in a single machine and to 1 to 32 machines in a network using the software being developed in this work have demonstrated the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed work. A comparison between the cost of the USB drive duplicator that was developed in this research, which is $200, is 92% lower than the cost of commercial proprietary products with similar functionalities. In addition, due to the open source nature, this USB drive duplicator can be upgraded easily. The experiments also validated the capabilities of Clonezilla live to conduct massive deployment in large-scale computers. The result is consistent with previous works. In general, the comparisons with other utilities and the experiment results have proved and demonstrated that the proposed architecture and the software being developed in this study are highly efficient and cost-effective for system deployment. For future research possibilities, more file systems can be supported. Meanwhile, the multicast mechanism and the support of BitTorrent to distribute images to large-scale computers can be further improved. Also, systems can be upgraded to support non-x86 CPU (e.g., the ARM processor) based systems and support for the massive deployment in these non-x86 computer systems, as well as the Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) network switch systems [54], because this will allow for all of the facilities in a cabinet inside a data center to be ready for use after they are deployed. In addition, the proposed novel open source massive deployment system can further be expanded to support the fog computing or even the fog of everything [6] in the future. [PERSON] and [PERSON] developed the program Clonezilla, packed the Linux distribution Clonezilla live, conceived and designed the experiments and analyzed the data; [PERSON] developed the file system processing module engine Partclone; [PERSON] wrote and edited the paper; and [PERSON] finalized the paper. [PERSON] rewrote the whole article and revised the work according to the review opinions. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Program**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**License**} & \multicolumn{4}{c}{**Case \({}^{*}\)**} \\ \cline{3-6}  & & **1** & **2** & **3** & **4** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Clonezilla} & \multirow{2}{*}{GPL} & \multirow{2}{*}{Y} & \multirow{2}{*}{Y} & \multirow{2}{*}{Y} & \multirow{2}{*}{Y} & ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserrs, resiect, xsfs, jfs, bbrfs, f2 fs, \\  & & & & & & & \\  & & & & & & \\  & & & & & & \\  & & & & & & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{FSO} & \multirow{2}{*}{GPL} & \multirow{2}{*}{N} & \multirow{2}{*}{Y} & \multirow{2}{*}{N} & \multirow{2}{*}{Y} & ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserrs, resiect, xsfs, jfs, bbrfs, f2 fs, \\  & & & & & & & \\  & & & & & & & \\  & &  
**Acknowledgments:** This project was supported by the National Center for High-Performance Computing in Taiwan. The authors thank those Clonezilla users who have provided ideas and reported problems with the program.