Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part I)
December 12, 2008 at 6:41 pm | Posted in Windows Deployment Services (WDS) | 31 CommentsTags: Image Deployment, Windows Deployment Services (WDS)
I’ve prepared a complete guide to configure a WDS Server on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003 to deploy complete operating systems images, this is the first part. In this post I’ll be setting the WDS requirements, installation, first configurations and images needed.
Introduction
Deploying operating systems it’s always a hard thing to do. Annoying, uncomfortable, but necessary for every environment. Why? Because every desktop computer on every organization has their own life cycle (even servers, a longer one, but cycle at last).
Even if your organization doesn’t have many desktops and even if those desktops don’t seem to need an image refresh in several months; the dynamics of today’s technology makes your base operating systems to change: Updates available, service packs, a new version of your organization’s software, newer operating systems, etc. And don’t forget the consequences of any user’s intervention: overloading the hard drive, personal software installation, etc; transforming always into a need to a fresh new installation. No need to keep enumerating things that normally happens; you probably know all of them.
Common Base Image Life Cycle
The bottom line is that a good and automated system to deploy your full operating systems images will significantly (and I do mean significantly) improve your daily tasks: Making an awkward job of following the installations steps for maybe 2 or 3 hours and transforming it to 30mins of a complete unattended provisioning. Here’s where Windows Deployment Services comes to play.
First of all I want to thank a friend of mine, Leonardo, who made a great “How To”, in Spanish, for WDS with Windows Server 2003 SP1, here’s the link to see it. Also you can find the Microsoft document “Deploying and Managing the Windows Deployment Services Update on Windows Server 2003”.
Requirements
- Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003 SP2 * for the WDS server .
- Active Directory and DNS up and working.
- DHCP server available and authorized by Active Directory on your network. Linux DHCP servers do not need to be authorized by AD.
- On the client side: NICs PXE compliant.
Almost all of Network Adapter that are available for several years now are in fact PXE compliant, so I think you don’t have to worry about that.
(Optional) And if we want to create our own unattended files:
- Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK).
We will use of this kit the Windows System Image Manager to create our Unattended Files for installation. Here’s the link to download the DVD image for installation.
Hardware Requirements
- Processor: No special specs on processor characteristics, but of course to WDS work properly you will need a Pentium III 800 MHz or higher.
- Memory: 256mb minimum.
- HD: Recommended 30 GB of free space on the disk that will be used for images storing.
It always depends on the images amount of images you will use to deploy. For example, I have over 5 full Vista images (meaning operating system, Office 2007 and several other applications) and less than 10 GB of disk space used.
Installation
To install WDS on a Windows Server 2003 SP2 you only need to add the component from “Add or Remove Programs”
To install it on Windows Server 2008 it is practically the same procedure, just add the Windows Deployment Services role from the “Add Role Wizard“. After that, all the configurations tasks are the same, since it is the same snap-in; and you’ll get bonus options using WDS on W2K8, like multicasting transmissions. I’ll comment this on the next posts.
* To install Windows Deployment Services on Windows Server 2003 SP1 first you must install the “Remote Installation Service” (RIS) component, you will not need to configure anything special with this component. After that, you have to use WAIK media: in the options you will find the Windows Deployment Services for installation.
Configuration
Once installed, access the “Windows Deployment Services” snap-in.
On the console, to get started right-click on the listed server and select “Configure Server”.
Here are the considerations you need to have to configure your server properly.
Configuring the Server
- After you selected the folder where you are going to store all the images for WDS, you need to check on the DHCP settings. The wizard will explain you about this option.
Since in my example I have a Microsoft-DHCP Server working on a different server from the WDS, these two options will remain unchecked. If you have both, WDS and DHCP, on the same server you should check both options. 
- Response Configurations: This is where you set to which clients you will respond when you receive a PXE request.
The difference between known clients and unknown is set on if the Computer Object exists on Active Directory.
If you want to create the computer objects before running WDS on that computer, you should have the GUID of that computer and include that information on the computer object. When you create the object on Active Directory, using “Active Directory Users and Computers” you need to set that “This is a managed computer” and insert the GUID.
Selecting this option can be really annoying if you want to improve your deployment, because you have to add the object first on Active Directory every time that you want to deploy an image, but it’s of course the more secure option to apply.
Or you can use the option “For unknown clients, notify administrator and respond after approval”. With this option, all the unknown clients that request to boot from PXE will appear to you in“Pending Devices” on your console, from there you can approve or decline them.
Or simply use the option “Respond to all (unknown and known) computer clients” and when you don’t need WDS, you can just stop the service to avoid any rogue clients.
On the final step of the wizard, select to start adding images now are we are ready to go!
Adding Boot Images
Before creating a complete image to be deployed with WDS, we need to add first a Windows Pre-Installation image (WindowsPE). With this image we provide the server with a pre installation environment needed for all installations. WindowsPE comes, as all the new operating systems, in a WIM format, included in the Vista or Windows 2008 installation media.
1 - To add the image, expand the server options on the console and on the “Boot Images” select “Add Boot Image”. Remember that this WindowsPE that we are adding will be the same for all the operating systems that we are going to use with WDS.
2 - Select “Browse” and check on the Vista or Windows 2008 installation media for the folder “Sources” and the file “boot.wim”. This is our WindowsPE.
3 - Select the name for this image and click on “Next”
Note: You can also use, of course, the x64 WindowsPE. Will be discussing it later.
4 - Review the summary and click on “Next”.
And now the Windows Pre-Installation Environment is available to boot from your network.
A clean Vista installation?
The procedure to add a clean Vista installation to WDS it’s pretty simple and practically the same procedure as for the boot image. As a good practice you should always have a clean Vista installation available on your server, here are some reasons:
1 – The unattended files that you may use on full images deployment also apply to clean installations.
2 – WDS use a smart storage method, which does not duplicate any installation files. Meaning that if you save a clean installation of Vista and you add later a full Vista image with several applications included, all the new information that is stored are the differential (delta) files between those two.
3 – Rearm activations: If you use the command line “slmgr –rearm” on the Vista installations to reset back your grace period back to 30 days, you should know that Vista only allows 3 times to run this command. But when you deploy a full image, the times that you can run this command line reduces according to the time when the image was created. But using the clean WIM file extracted from the Vista media, does not have that drawback when you run the rearm command.
4 – Having a clean installation always available that you can deploy any time will help you when you need to make changes to the default installation image or when you need to start a new one from the scratch.
Here are the steps (again, you have to use the Vista installation media):
1 – On the WDS console, right click on “Install Images” and select “Add Image Group”
2 – Select the name that you are going to use for this group. For Example: VistaInstallation.
3 – Right click on “Install Images” again and select “Add Install Image”. When the wizard starts select to use the group you’ve just created and click “Next”.
4 – On the next window, browse the Vista media for the folder “Sources” and select the file “install.wim” and click “Next”
5 – Since the Vista installations always include all the versions on the same file, we should select only the one that apply for our case. In my case, Windows Vista Ultimate. Click “Next”
6 – On the summary window click “Next” and the image will start to upload to your server.
At this point we have all the necessary components to deploy a clean image for Vista from the network; but the installation remains attended. So, the disk configuration and the Vista options (language, product key, computer name, etc) still need to be manually inserted.
We’ll be reviewing in the next posts a complete unattended installation for Windows Vista and also making a personalize installation of the operating system.
Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part II)
Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part III)
Cheers!
31 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a Reply
-
-
About Me
Computer geek, totally fan of the latest's IT platform solutions. Since 2006 I've been mentioned as Microsoft Student Partner, I continue working with them, collaborating on different academic and technological events. On this blog, you'll find most of the experience I have evaluating, designing, implementing and managing those technologies.
-
-
App-V Books
Visitors Map
Recent Comments
Technorati
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
[...] 12, 2008 Ok then, after completing the first configurations made on the Part I of this guide we can perform a clean but attended network installation of Windows [...]
Pingback by Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part II) « Augusto Alvarez— December 12, 2008 #
[...] already installed and properly configured Windows Deployment Server on Windows 2003/Windows 2008 (Part I); and we created a full image (programs and features installed) on our Windows Vista and uploaded [...]
Pingback by Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part III) « Augusto Alvarez— December 12, 2008 #
[...] Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part I)Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part III) [...]
Pingback by Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part II) « Augusto Alvarez— December 14, 2008 #
[...] After completing three posts about unattended deployment of full operating systems with WDS (Part I, Part II and Part III), I had pending this post about the examples of the unattended files. So here [...]
Pingback by Windows Deployment Services (WDS): Unattended Installation Files Examples « Augusto Alvarez— January 10, 2009 #
[...] This previous post of mine shows how WDS must be configured to work together with [...]
Pingback by Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part I « Augusto Alvarez— January 31, 2009 #
With Dhcp on a different server from the wds, what settings specifically need to be set in the dhcp server?
Comment by Doug— April 9, 2009 #
Hello Doug,
You don’t have to configure anything special on the DHCP server after you properly configure your WDS Server, just remember to leave UNCHECKED the options on the WDS configuration: “Do not listen on port 67″ and “Configure DHCP option 60 to ‘PXEClient’”.
The DHCP role is needed on the same network with WDS, but there are no special configurations to perform on it; it doesn’t have to be a Windows DHCP either, I’ve worked together with WDS and Linux DHCP servers.
Cheers!
Augusto
Comment by Augusto Alvarez— April 9, 2009 #
Hi Augusto.
Does WDS work with DHCP set-up on Cisco Routers?
Comment by Chet— December 3, 2009 #
I haven’t test it, but it should work perfectly since WDS use some of DHCP options that are defined with the common standard.
Cheers!
Augusto
Comment by Augusto Alvarez— December 3, 2009 #
Unfortunately I did not fully understand this part:
3 – Rearm activations: If you use the command line “slmgr –rearm” on the Vista installations to reset back your grace period back to 30 days, you should know that Vista only allows 3 times to run this command. But when you deploy a full image, the times that you can run this command line reduces according to the time when the image was created. But using the clean WIM file extracted from the Vista media, does not have that drawback when you run the rearm command.
I know that running “slmgr -rearm” can only be run 3 times, however what do you mean by deploying a full image reduces the amount of time according to the time the image was created? Do you mean the time a custom image was captured? And what about the last sentence? Does it mean if I use the install.wim on the Windows Vista Retail Media (or a TechNet Plus Retail ISO) that I can rearm an unlimited amount of times?
Any clarification would greatly be appreciated.
Thanks
Comment by tkmc— June 24, 2009 #
Hello TKMC,
Consider that a customized image it is available for 120 days (3 “slmgr -rearm” executions + the first 30 days), so if you have a customized image within your WDS for about 2 months, if you deploy that image right now, you will only have 2 “slmgr -rearm” available to execute.
And for your second question, if you use the raw install.wim from an ISO file or media to upload it to WDS, you will have the chance to run the slmgr -rearm command 3 times when you deploy that image, and it won’t matter if you have the same uploaded image for over 4 o 5 months, you will still have the 3 rearms executions.
That is basically the difference between a raw and customized image.
Hope it helps.
Cheers!
Augusto
Comment by Augusto Alvarez— June 24, 2009 #
hi
would like to know if its possible to deploy windows 2008 R2 from WDS installed on windows 2003 server ?
when i tried its giving error like operation failed with 0×80070002 .
were as i could install 2008 sp2 from the same server any issues.
Comment by Charles— September 14, 2009 #
thanks for advise to install wds
Comment by toramsrinu— March 16, 2010 #
[...] how to implement unattended installations of Windows Vista using Windows Deployment Services (Post I, Post II and Post [...]
Pingback by Deploying Windows 7 Using Windows Deployment Services (WDS): Step-by-Step – Part I « Augusto Alvarez— April 20, 2010 #
[...] how to implement unattended installations of Windows Vista using Windows Deployment Services (Post I, Post II and Post III). But we didn’t take a look about deploying Windows 7 using Windows [...]
Pingback by Deploying Windows 7 Using Windows Deployment Services (WDS): Step-by-Step | دانلود بازی کلیپ موبایل موزیک فیلم— May 14, 2010 #
[...] This previous post of mine shows how WDS must be configured to work together with [...]
Pingback by Deploying Windows 7 + Office 2010 Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 – Part I « Augusto Alvarez— July 13, 2010 #
I installed the Windows 7 OS, downloaded the WindowsAIK, created a share on my server remotely and made a UDF USB boot drive on onw PC.
When I try to create a new task sequence I get an error about denied access to the share on the server.
If I have gone astray; where?
Thanks,
Comment by JimS— July 28, 2010 #
[...] Note: For proper WDS configuration with DHCP and boot images, check this post. [...]
Pingback by Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part III « Augusto Alvarez— September 2, 2010 #
will u display the wds please
Comment by shaheen— October 28, 2010 #
[...] Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part I) [...]
Pingback by Basic Windows 7 Deployment Services Overview « windowsmasher— January 28, 2011 #
[...] مطرح نمایید. از لینکهای زیر میتوانید استفاده نمایید: Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part I) Windows Deployment Services (WDS) – http://www.windows-noob.com how can I setup WDS in Windows Server 2008 [...]
Pingback by Windows Deployment Servicesبروی سرور 2003— February 20, 2011 #
Hi, I am trying to install the service on a server 2k3 standard machine that is running the DHCP as well as WDS. I get the service to install, however when i get to the step that you add a boot image, (or any image) it is showing access denied. I have logged in as the Domain Admin, and several other accounts in the administrators group. I have tried adding access permissions for each account that I have used to the C:\remoteinstall folder, and still no luck. Do you have any suggestions?
Comment by aaronhurst.tech@gmail.com— September 30, 2011 #
Hello there,
In the Event Viewer you can find anything related to WDS?
I’ve seen similar errors to that, and it was related with corrupted installation of WDS. I would recommend to: Uninstall WDS role, reboot the server, remove the RemoteInstall folder created earlier and re-run the installation process again.
Best regards,
Augusto
Comment by Augusto Alvarez— October 17, 2011 #
I’d like to know if it’s possible to image in this situation:
1) WDS and DHCP are running on Microsoft servers, also using pxechain.com to point to
2) My PXE server for Linux where I’ll provide the remaining info. This PXE (tftp) server IS NOT a DHCP server, however, and cannot be.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Regis
Comment by durgadas— October 6, 2011 #
Hello Regis,
I’m pretty sure that using that configuration is not “fully supported” by Microsoft. Did you try using the Option 60 in DHCP pointing the PXE to your Linux?
Best regards,
Augusto
Comment by Augusto Alvarez— October 17, 2011 #
I have configured a WDS which has all Win 7 images in all versions…..
the problem I am facing here is whenever I try installing OS to a client, the client automatically gets a name and it is also getting joined to the domain…How can I stop it ????
Any workaround will be highly appreciated :)
Comment by Pardha— October 28, 2011 #
Hello Pardha,
Are you using the unattended file showed in the post? You can also use the tag to join the machine to a workgroup instead of a domain. Take a look also to the auto-add policy: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770832(WS.10).aspx#BKMK_2
Hope it helps,
Augusto
Comment by Augusto Alvarez— December 8, 2011 #
[...] started with Windows Vista deployments and the initial version of Windows Deployment Services (Post I, Post II and Post III); the moving forward with Windows 7 using also WDS (Post I and Post II), and [...]
Pingback by Deploying Windows 8: Unattended Installation Using Windows Deployment Services (WDS) – Part I « Augusto Alvarez— April 25, 2012 #
I have install MDT2010 in a Win7 x32 OS, can I install WDS in Win7 as well?
Comment by nflcy— May 29, 2012 #
No, WDS is a Windows Server role.
Cheers,
Augusto
Comment by Augusto Alvarez— May 30, 2012 #
have you guys tried Serva?
http://www.vercot.com/~serva/howto/WindowsPXE1.html
Comment by Tivo— September 22, 2012 #