Setting up a Windows Deployment Services environment
Windows deployment services was released to replace the old Windows RIP. Windows Deployment Services (WDS) makes it easier for us to deploy Windows Vista or even Windows XP using images. In this article I will go trough some of the steps I had to do to get everything up and working. For someone using Microsoft only environment this should be a very straightforward process but we run DHCP on Linux servers and have quite a mixed environment so there where some things to consider.
What you need
- Technician computer (your desktop/laptop)
- Master computer (the computer from which the image will be captured)
- Client computer (In the example this is the same as the master computer)
- Windows Deployment services configured and running on a server.
- DHCP server in the network.
First of all install Windows Automated Installation Toolkit to your technician computer. You will need it to modify the WindowsPE image we use to capture the .wim image.
Creating and imaging an Master Installation
First and foremost you need to have a Master installation. This will be the starting point for any of the deployments you will do so think carefully about what you want to install on this machine. Because we still deploy Windows XP Professional 32-bit this is what this article will cover. At some point I will make a Vista image article but let’s save it for later as the process is almost the same.
Things I want to install are Microsoft Office and programs that we don’t deploy normally trough group policies or other central management systems. I also like to change the OEM information on our installations, like adding the company logo at the Computer information page and information on how to get in contact with our support. So if you have a logo in some format save it as oemlogo.bmp and create oeminfo.ini file. In the oeminfo.ini add the following lines
[general]
Manufacturer=Your Company name
[Support Information]
Line1=For technical support call
Line2=123-456-789
Line3=http://www.nixadmins.net/
Of course change the settings to match your own company. Done customizing? Let’s get on to generalizing the computer.
Using Sysprep to prepare the computer to be imaged.
To remove anything that identifies this computer we need to run sysprep on it. If you are installing Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 from your Volume License media slip it in and go to SupportTools. In the folder you’ll find Deploy.cab. Extract sysprep.exe,setupcl.exe to C:Sysprep. Also copy the I386 folder from the CD to C:I386, we will need it if we want any kind of regional settings applied to the installation. While we are at it extract the setupmgr.exe to your technician computer, this step is optional but it speeds up creating the Sysprep.inf file quite a bit. Done?
Start up setupmgr.exe on your Technician Computer and select Create New and Sysprep setup file, select Windows XP Professional. Select fully automated and start filling in blanks, fill in the local administrator password also, you can encrypt it and the sysprep folder will be deleted from the target computer once the image is done. We won’t make this installation fully automated (even if we chose that option, but you still can) because I want to keep our company naming policy on the computers. So after filling in your volume license key and owner information save the sysprep.inf file somewhere and open it for editing. Your file should look something like this.
;SetupMgrTag
[Unattended]
OemSkipEula = Yes
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
ExtendOemPartition=1
InstallFilesPath=C:i386
TargetPath=WINDOWS[GuiUnattended]
AdminPassword=A lot of bla bla.
AutoLogon=Yes
AutoLogonCount=3
OemSkipRegional=1
OemSkipWelcome=1
TimeZone=125
EncryptedAdminPassword=Yes[UserData]
OrgName=”Your company name”
ProductKey=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
FullName=”IT Department”
;ComputerName=* ;<- Notice I commented this line out to make the Mini installer ask for a computer name.[RegionalSettings]
LanguageGroup=1
Language=0000081d[Sysprep]
BuildMassStorageSection=Yes[TapiLocation]
CountryCode=358
Dialing=Tone
AreaCode=09[Branding]
BrandIEUsingUnattended=Yes[Proxy]
Proxy_Enable=0
Use_Same_Proxy=0[Identification]
JoinDomain=domain.com[Networking]
InstallDefaultComponents=Yes
Compare your file with the one above. That’s how it should look like. After you are done with the file copy it over to the same folder you placed sysprep.exe on the master installation. Which should be in C:Sysprep. Once that is done let’s prepare the computer for ImageX.
Open the command line (cmd.exe) and go to the C:sysprep folder. In the folder run
. The switch mini stands for mini setup which will be called once the computer reboots, it will use the sysprep.inf file to fill in as many of the blanks as possible. So if you are using a file like mine it should ask only for a computer name. The reseal switch clears Event Viewer and prepares the computer for delivery, it also sets the mini setup to start at boot up. Once Sysprep is done the computer will shutdown.
Follow up
So what have we done so far?
- Set up the Technician computer with Windows Automated Installation toolkit and setupmgr.exe.
- Created a master installation to use as a base for our future images.
- Used sysprep to prepare the computer for ImageX.
In the next article I’ll go trough setting up a custom WinPE image to use to capture our current master installation using ImageX and using it to capture the .wim image to our Windows Deployment server. So I hope to see you in a few days once the next part of this article is done.
Comments
Nice depiction of procedure
Where can I find following links
Sorry, I’ve been really busy at work so the follow ups are still drafts. I’ll try to get them done this weekend. Really sorry about the delay.
I recently setup WDS at work. My biggest hurdle was making a hardware independent image. Needless to say, I haven’t yet figured this out. Have you had any luck with it?
The hardware independent image is a real pain in the a**. We use a few images and try to keep our computer hardware as similar as possible to avoid to much work on images.
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