Chris and Daves SharePoint and Tech Blog

Rule Settings in MDT 2010 

   MDT 2010 as you have seen is very customizable and you can stop some screens showing with the rules available in MDT this will cut down on the amount of input required during the operating system install. Theses inbuilt rules are quite limited so below you will find many more that you can add. 

To access the rules from the deployment workbench Right click your deployment share and choose properties the second tab (Rules) will show you the limited built in rules. 

The list of rules below when applied will only show 3 screens during the install process Computer Name

 Task Sequence Selection

 Time Zone Selection

[Settings]

Priority=Default

Properties=MyCustomProperty

 [Default]

OSInstall=YES

SkipAdminPassword=YES

SkipApplications=YES

SkipAppsOnUpgrade=YES

SkipBDDWelcome=YES

SkipBitLocker=YES

SkipCapture=YES

SkipComputerName=No

SkipComputerBackup=YES

SkipDeploymentType=YES

DeploymentType=NEWCOMPUTER

SkipDomainMembership=YES

JoinDomain=Demo

DomainAdmin=administrator

DomainAdminDomain= Demo

DomainAdminPassword=*******

SkipFinalSummary=No

SkipLocaleSelection=YES

KeyboardLocale=en-GB

UserLocale=en-GB

UILanguage=en-GB

SkipPackageDisplay=YES

SkipProductKey=YES

SkipSummary=YES

SkipTaskSequence=NO

SkipTimeZone=YES

TimeZone=085

TimeZoneName=Greenwich Standard Time

SkipUserData=Yes

I hope this article helps with your OS deployments using MDT 2010 I will try to keep the blog updated on the latest MDT improvements.

Update

On 15^th July 2010 Microsoft released update 1 for MDT 2010 I have applied this update and the good news is all still works you can download from

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3bd8561f-77ac-4400-a0c1-fe871c461a89&displaylang=en&tm

You can also find this series of post as a single pdf file see below.

MDT 2010 Setup Step by Step

Windows Deployment services PXE boot image

  One of the steps at the beginning of this article was to setup Windows Deployment Services we will now use this to deploy a PXE boot image. From the Start Menu | Administration Tools select Windows Deployment Services once open right click on boot images and select ‘Add Boot Image’

The boot images are stored in your deployment share and are found in the boot folder I will select the LiteTouchPE_x86.wim file for this demo

The final step of this part is to enable multicast this is achieved by going back to the MDT workbench and right click on the deployment share and choose properties on the general tab and tick enable multicast from the general page.

Creating a Task sequence

  The final part in configuring MDT 2010 is to create a task sequence this will enable you to deploy your chosen operating systems to your client workstations.

 The first step is to open the deployment workbench and right click on the task sequence node and choose “New Task Sequence”

The first screen you will see is the general settings enter a Task Sequence ID and a Task sequence name you can optionally enter a description

The next screen asks which template to use I will leave this at the default setting Standard client task sequence

The next screen asks you to choose your OS earlier in the article I set up a Windows 7 OS so this is displayed here

The next screen asks you to specify a product key this give you three options do not specify a product key is what I will choose as we use a KMS server for key management

The next screen asks for your OS setting Full name, Organization and IE home page

The next screen asks for a local admin password you can let the user enter their own or specify a password yourself I would always set a password otherwise you could end up in a situation where every workstation has an individual password and this situation would be unmanageable.

Next you will see a summary screen giving a breakdown of all the information in your new task sequence

Once you click next your task sequence will be created and a final confirmation screen will be shown

Finally as I have said previously update the deployment share from the deployment workbench this is always a good habit to get into after every change you make.

In the next and final part of this series we will look at MDT Rules.

Dave

Adding an application to your MDT installation

The next thing we will do is add Office 2010 to the base image this is not a necessary step at the moment so if you deploy applications using a 3rd party tool you can skip this step. Open the Deployment workbench and the MDT Deployment Share section and right click on the applications sub section and choose “New Application”

This will launch the new application wizard this will give you three options

Application with source files

Application without source files or elsewhere on the network

Application Bundle

On the next screen fill in the Publisher details, Application name, Version and Language the only mandatory field is application name

The next screen asks you to choose the location of the source files I will be using the Office 2010 DVD for this article

The next screen will ask for the destination location in your MDT deployment I will leave this at the default setting.

The next screen asks for the command line to kick off the install you can use command line arguments in this but again I will leave it as default and customize later.

Next you will see a summary screen and when you click next all the source files will be copied to your deployment.

After the copy process click finish your application is now ready to deploy with your image.

Customizing your application

   From the deployment workbench click on application and right click on your newly created package and choose properties

From this screen we will see 4 tabs including an office products tab as illustrated below.

The part we are going to focus on is the “Office Customization Tool” button you can on the office tab enter the product key and enter basic information but we will look more closely at the advanced customization available.

Office Customization Tool

  When you click on the Office Customization Tool button an information box will pop up informing you that the MSP file created will need to be stored in the updates folder so that setup can find it during the office install.

Once Ok is click you will see the screen illustrated below

Highlight the product and click OK this will give you access to the advanced customization

This interface and options available would require a booklet of its own but you can find more information at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179097.aspx  

  Once you have finished your customization close the tool and update the deployment share from the workbench this is always good practice after any changes.

Adding a Base Image to MDT 2010

 The next step is now to add a base image to your MDT deployment.

Expand the deployment shares and right click Operating Systems and select ‘Import Operating System’

I will choose the Full set of source files option and for this I will need the windows 7 DVD so click next

Choose the path to your source files and click next

Select a destination directory name I will stick with the defaults for this article you will then be presented with a summary screen check to make sure all is ok and then click next this will take you to a progress screen and once the import is completed click finish.

The next step is to update the right clicking on MDT Deployment shares and choose ‘Update Deployment Share’

Select completely regenerate the boot images this is always good practice each time you make any changes to your MDT setup

In the next part in the series i will show you how to add applications to your MDT deployment

This post is a continuation in the series on MDT part 1 can be found at http://www.sharepointedutech.com/2010/07/07/mdt-2010-setup-step-by-step-part-1/

 Installing the Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7

   MDT 2010 uses the Windows 7 automated installation kit which can be down loaded from the Microsoft site here so before we continue I will install and configure, the download for AIK is an ISO file you can at this point burn to a DVD or unpack the ISO file and run setup.

Click on Windows AIK setup from the list on the left and all I did to complete the installation of AIK is follow the prompts and accept all the default values.

 Install Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010

  The next step is to download from here the installation files for MDT 2010 on this site you will find install files for 64bit and also 32bit installs as well various read me files to help you get the most out of MDT 2010.

Again with this install I will accept all the default values as I go through the install. After the install is completed you will have a new start menu item called Microsoft Deployment Toolkit we will now continue the configuration by clicking on deployment workbench.

Configure The Deployment Shares For MDT 2010

 Through this part of the post I will show how to configure the images you require for your operating system deployments I will be using windows 7 for this but you could use windows vista or XP.

You now need to create a deployment share this is completed by right clicking deployment share in the MMC and selecting ‘new deployment share’

I will store all my images on the E data drive I created earlier for my server setup

By default the system will create the share as a hidden share (With a $ symbol at the end) I will leave this as the setting to use

The next screen asks for a descriptive name I will accept the default setting

The next screen asks if an image should be captured if you are planning on using MDT to capture the image leave this ticked

The next screen asks if you should allow users to set the local admin password I would recommend leaving this unticked as you could end up not knowing the local admin password on any of your computers and potentially every machine having a unique admin password (not sure how you could manage that situation)

The next screen asks should the user be prompted for a product key this can be useful but we use a KMS server (Maybe another post) so we do not require this so I will leave it unticked.

Next you will see the summary screen check all the settings and click next

By Default the permissions setup on the deployment share are –

The next post i will include information on adding a base image

On the 8^th July 2010 I will be giving a presentation to a group of Network managers from Essex on how we deployed Windows 7 in August 2009 and covering some of the issues that we had. At that time we used ghost to deploy but now we are using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit so I thought I would share with you over the next few post how to setup MDT and start to deploy your operating systems and applications with this great free tool.

None of this would have been possible without the hours of research and trial and error put in by Neil Hodgkinson my assistant network manager who has perfected the use and deployment of MDT down to a fine art.

Installing MDT

 The first step is to add the Windows Deployment Services role from server manager

Leave both role services ticked please be aware of the prerequisites required to run WDS i.e. Active Directory, DNS and DHCP these do not need to be installed on this server but available on the domain  

Configuration of MDT

 Once the role is installed the next step is the configuration of the server, from server manager click on the newly installed WDS Role if you then click on the servers item in the view you will see that further configuration is required on the server.

Right click on the server name and choose ‘Configure Server’

You will then be presented with an information screen outlining the prerequisites required to run WDS as I stated earlier

The only additional requirement is that the server has an NTFS partition to store the images on

For this series of posts I have configured this virtual machine with a 40GB Data partition as you can see from the screenshot above it does recommend that the images are not stored on the system partition.

The next screen is the PXE Server Initial Settings screen here you are presented with 3 options

For this series I will select ‘Respond to all computers (Known and Unknown)’ with this option selected you are also presented with a further tick box that allows you to configure an option that requires admin approval to unknown client computers through the pending node snap in.

 I will un-tick add images to the server now as we will be using MDT 2010 for our image creation and management. The screenshot below shows the WDS snapin as represented in server manager the next step is the MDT 2010 setup.

In the next post in this seies i will show you how to install and configure AIK