Augusto Alvarez

This is going to be the last part (at least for now) for this step-by-step guide for customizing and deploying Windows 7 images with MDT 2010. On the previous posts we’ve learned how to run the firsts configurations on MDT, adding operating system files and creating a task sequence for the reference image (Part I); and also adding Office 2007 to the reference image and making it a silent installation (Part II).

The third post it’s going to be just to deploy the reference and customized image, and then capture it into a .wim file, that we can later deploy using MDT or add it to Windows Deployment Services (WDS).

Deploying Reference Image

Since we already have our boot environments, ISO and WIM files; and that we have the Windows Deployment Services role installed, I’ll start using it: I’m going to add the LTI boot image to WDS that will let me create and capture the reference image.

Note: You can also use the ISO file too boot from a CD or, if it’s a virtual machine, mounting it; but using WDS keep the things a lot easier.

1. Open WDS snap-in > “Boot Images” > “Add Boot Image”.

2. Browse the MDT distribution share, inside the “Boot” folder. And select “LiteTouchePE_x64.wim”. Click “Open”.

3. Finish up the boot image wizard.

4. Now on the computer you are going to use as the reference, boot from the network to receive WDS boot image. And select the LiteTouchePE image you added.

Note: For proper WDS configuration with DHCP and boot images, check this post.

5. Once the boot files are loaded, a new wizard will be prompted. Select your “Keyboard Layout” and click on “Next”.

6. Insert the domain credentials that will be used to access the shared files used by MDT 2010. Use a domain admin account to avoid any inconvenient. 

7. Select the task sequence to be executed: “Deploy Windows 7”.

8. Enter a computer name. A random one is created by default.

9. Leave the option “Join a Workgroup”.
IMPORTANT: Do not add it to a domain, otherwise you won’t be able to capture the image you are about to deploy. A machine joined to a domain it’s not a good idea to be captured, because if the sysprep task is removed from the deployment, you will have several issues about the Security Identifiers (SID) within the domain.

10. Since we are not migrating any image, this is a fresh deployment select “Do not restore user data and settings”.

11. Select your location and keyboard layout to be configured on the reference image.

12. Select the “Time Zone”.

13. Select the application you are going to install “Microsoft Office 2007”.

14. You can skip BitLocker configuration if you want to and set “Do not Enable BitLocker for this computer”.

15. Leave selected the option “Capture an image of this reference computer”. And insert the filename “WIN/_REFERENCE.wim”. Click on Next.

16. Here you’ll find a summary of the options selected. Click on “Begin” and the installation process will start.

Creating and formatting partitions

OS installation and final settings

Installing Office 2007 silently

Creating WIM file and send it to the server

Notice that this tasks could take several minutes, depending on your hardware. Try to not interrupt the process. After all this, the WIM file is created and stored in “%distribution%\Captures”.

Adding the Reference Image to MDT 2010

You actually have two options to start using this image:

- Add it to WDS and start deploying it from there. But you don’t get a chance to make any other changes to that image, unless you create a new one.
- Add it to MDT 2010 as a new customized OS. You can add or modify new task sequences to this new machine, for example, adding a new application or enable/disable other features that will be included directly in the deployment.

We are going to take option 2 for now, since the WDS option does not require any other task other than “Add Install Image” from the console. 

1. “Deployment Workbench” > “Distribution Share” > “Operating Systems” > “New”.

2. Select “Custom image file” and click on “Next”.

3. Browse for the WIM file that was created and click on “Next”.

4. Leave selected “Setup and Sysprep files are not needed”.

5. Select the directory name: “WIN7_REFERENCE”. And click on “Finish”.

Once you click Finish a process starts working checking the integrity of the file and several other tasks, it could take several minutes to complete. Be patient and the image should appear as a valid operating system.

Creating the Task Sequence

Now that we have the image of the OS, we are going to create the task sequence that will be using that image.

1. “Deployment Workbench” > “Task Sequences” > “New”.

2. Insert “Task Sequence ID”: “Win7_Target”. And name “Deploy Captured Image – Windows 7”.

3. Select “Standard Client Task Name”. Click on “Next”.

4. Select the reference OS just added from the list.

5. Leave selected “Do not specify product key at this time”.

6. Complete the OS settings like it was done before.

7. Specify Administrator’s password and click on “Finish”.

Deploying Reference Image to a Client

We’ve now configured everything that was needed for this reference image, so we can start deploying it to a client. The process will be the same that we used for creating the reference image, the only twist regarding the previous configuration is that we are going to join to the domain this machine.

1. Boot from the network on the client machine. Select again “Lite Touch Windows PE (x64)”.

2. The wizard will prompt again. Select your “Keyboard Layout”.

3. Specify domain credentials to access the network shares.

4. Now we are going to select the task sequence created to deploy the customized image “Deploy Captured Image – Windows 7”.

5. Select the computer name.

6. Join the machine to the domain.

7. On the summary section click on “Begin” to start.

Notice that the option to capture the image was not present because we selected that we are going to add this machine to the domain.

The deployment process begins.

Once it’s done, you’ll see this message. Check “Details” for more information.

Office 2007 installed with all the components.

Conclusions

• If you are not familiarized with this deployment tool, it’s a great chance to start with MDT 2010.
• Automated deployment tools will give you a lot of profit and flexibility once you get the chance to get to know, manage and maintain them. For more info about it, check my other Windows Deployment Services posts.
• Even though this is just a MDT Beta version, did not bring me any stability problems. We expect to get to know more about the functionalities once it gets to a RC version or RTM.
• Check the MDT help included in the installation, you’ll find almost everything you need to know there (most of the sections are the same as in MDT 2008).

Well that’s pretty much it for now about Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1 and Windows 7.

I hope that you find these posts helpful.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part I

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part II

Cheers!

On the first post of this series, we’ve managed to install MDT 2010 and its requirements, prepare distribution share and task sequence, add Windows 7 image to use it as reference and create the deployment point. We are now going to add Office 2007 as an application to be deployed included in the OS image and complete the environment to generate the reference image.

The process of adding an application like Office 2007 it is quite simple, the only trick is to get the application to install silently (or unattended) without requiring for user intervention , we’ll see how that works.

Adding Applications to MDT 2010: Office 2007

We’ll add the application using also a simple wizard, but the interesting part comes when you get the chance to modify default settings on the Office 2007 package:

1. “Deployment Workbench” > “Distribution Share” > “Applications” > “New”.

2. Select “Application with source files”.

3. Complete the data about the application.

4. Select the “Source Directory”. Since I have it on the hard drive, I’ll check “Move the files to the distribution share instead of copying them”.

5. Keep the directory name as suggested: “Microsoft Office 2007”.

6. On “Command Details” introduce the name of the executable for Office 2007: “setup.exe” and click on “Finish”. We’ll add the special arguments to achieve silent installations in next steps.

With that performed the Office 2007 is added as an application in Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. MDT also detects automatically the options available for Office products, this way we can modify them in a simple way.

Office 2007: Silent and personalized installation

To achieve this, we are going to use the mentioned feature of MDT to generate a “Config.xml” file that is used for personalizing installations of Office 2007. This XML is a very flexible option that we can modify according to our needs and generate ourselves custom and unattended Office suite installations.

1. Access the Application Properties from the “Deployment Workbench” console. And get to the “Office Products” tab.

2.  Now we are going to select the following options:

Office 2007 Product to Install: Enterprise (this is the version that I’m using).
Office 2007 Languages: en-us.
Product Key: If applies, select your PID.
Customer Name: Augusto Alvarez
Display Level: None. This will generate the silent installation.
Accept EULA: Checked.

3. Click on “Apply”.

This will generate the XML file that you can check it clicking on “Edit Config.xml”. You should see something like this (notice that the first section it’s just a sample):

You can check also on “Details” tab that “setup.exe” command line has been modified to use the recently generated XML: “setup.exe /config Enterprise.WW\config.xml” (Enterprise.WW is the folder where the XML file is stored)

This XML file will install all the components of the Office 2007 Enterprise suite. If you want to continue customizing the components to be installed, check this example of Config.xml that selects only Word, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint and remove remaining components.

Config.xml Example

<Configuration Product="Enterprise">

     <Display Level="none" CompletionNotice="no" SuppressModal="no" AcceptEula="yes" />
     <USERNAME Value="Augusto Alvarez" />
     <AddLanguage Id="match" />
     <AddLanguage Id="en-us" ShellTransform="Yes" />
     <OptionState Id="AccessFiles" State="absent" Children="force" />
     <OptionState Id="ExcelFiles" State="Local" />
     <OptionState Id="GrooveFiles" State="Absent" Children="force" />
     <OptionState Id="OneNoteFiles" State="Local" Children="force" />
     <OptionState Id="OUTLOOKFiles" State="Local" />
     <OptionState Id="PPTFiles" State="Local" />
     <OptionState Id="PubPrimary" State="Absent" Children="force" />
     <OptionState Id="RMSFiles" State="Local" Children="force" />
     <OptionState Id="WORDFiles" State="Local" />
     <OptionState Id="XDOCSFiles" State="Local" Children="force" />
     <OptionState Id="SHAREDFiles" State="Local" />
     <OptionState Id="TOOLSFiles" State="Local" />
     <OptionState Id="EXCELFiles" State="Local" />

</Configuration>

 

For more information about Config.xml customization check this link: Config.xml file in the 2007 Office system.

Adding Office 2007 to the Task Sequence

With the previous steps we have already added the Office suite and configured to a silent installation. Now we need to introduce it on the task sequence prepared on the previous post.

1. “Deployment Workbench” > “Task Sequences” > “Win7” > “Properties”.

2. Access the tab “Task Sequence”. Here are all the steps involved in the process, you can check all the options (most of them did not appear on the Task Sequence wizard) and change their values or disable specific steps.

3. The step that we are interested in is “State Restore” > “Install Applications”. Select “Install a single application” > “Microsoft Office 2007”. Click “OK”.

If you later want to add more applications to the same task sequence, use the same step on this task sequence, select “Add” > “General” > “Install Application”. The application must, of course, added already to MDT.

Now the installation of Office 2007 it’s included on the “Deploy Windows 7” sequence and will occur silently with the parameters included.

On the next post we’ll see how to boot and generate the Windows 7 image that will be captured and ready to be deployed on your environment.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part I

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part III

Cheers!

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit team released the first beta of their next version: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1 (you can access to the Beta program from Microsoft Connect and download the build). This new version includes several improvements, but perhaps the most important ones are related to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 compatibility.

Some of the New Features

• Support for deploying: Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
• Hard Link Migrations using USMT 4 (User Migration Toolkit). 
• Integration with new Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) 2.0 toolset such as BCDBOOT and Windows PE 3.0.
• DISM tool (Dism.exe) included with WAIK 2.0 replace three other tools on previous version: Pkgmgr.exe (Package Manager), Intlcfg.exe (Internal Settings Configuration Tool) and PEimg.exe  (WindowsPE Command Line tool ).

If you are planning to implement Windows 7 on your environment (check this link about the review I made about Windows 7 functionality) or you want to start to get to know Microsoft Deployment Toolkit in this new version; I’ve prepared this step-by-step guides that will cover almost everything you need to know about MDT 2010 and automated Windows 7 deployment, with personalized images.

These posts will cover the Lite Touch Installation (LTI) type of deployment of Windows 7 (Zero Touch Installation with System Center Configuration Manager 2007 it’s not currently supported with these Beta versions).

What we are going to achieve? Add Windows 7 to MDT, include applications (Office 2007) to be deployed within the operating system to generate a reference image. And finally we’ll capture this reference image (in a single .wim file) and make it available for a massive deployment with MDT 2010 Beta 1.

Requirements

Note: LTI deployment does not require Windows Deployment Services (WDS) to be fully operational to actually work, but we are going to take this as a requirement to implement WDS for PXE boot for only WindowsPE images.

Environment

• Active Directory and DNS
• DHCP properly configured for WDS.
• Windows Deployment Services (WDS) configured.
• Windows 7 source files.

Note: This previous post of mine shows how WDS must be configured to work together with DHCP.

Server

• Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta
• Windows Automated Installation 2.0 (WAIK).
  You can download WAIK 2.0 from this link (English).

Installation

You won’t have any problem installing MDT 2010 Beta 1. There’s only a simple wizard to complete.

To verify that the installation completed successfully and all the necessary components are installed: Open “Deployment Workbench” snap-in from Start Menu, and check “Information Center” > “Components” > “Installed”.

MDT 2010 First Configurations

These initial configurations don’t differ from MDT 2008:

1. Create the distribution share.
2. Add operating system files to the distribution share.
3. Create a task sequence for the reference computer.
4. Create a deployment point.

Create the Distribution Share

This is the folder where the MDT files (OS, applications, drivers, etc) will be kept.

1. Open “Deployment Workbench”. Right click on “Distribution Share”  > “Create a Distribution Share Directory”.

  2. Select a folder. Click on “Finish”.  Recommendation: Use a separate partition like “E:\Distribution”.

Add Windows 7 Operating System

Here we are going to add the OS to be deployed and create the reference image.

1. On “Deployment Workbench” > “Distribution Share”, right-click on “Operating Systems” > “New”.

2. Choose the type of OS to add. Select “Full set of source files” and click on “Next”.

3. Select the Source Directory. In my case, I have the Windows 7 x64 files copied in the hard drive, so I also mark the option “Move the files to the distribution share instead of copying them”. Click on “Next”.

4. Select a directory name. And click on “Finish”.

Now all the files will be moved to the Distribution Share folder and should appear as available after it completes.

Create the Task Sequence

This is where we define the steps involved in the installation process for the target computer.

1. “Deployment Workbench” > “Distribution Share” > “Tasks Sequences” > “New”.

2. Enter a “Task Sequence ID”: “Win7”; and a “Task Sequence Name”: “Deploy Windows 7”.

3. Select “Standard Client Task Sequence”.

4. Select the version of the OS to be deployed, in this case “Windows 7 ULTIMATE”.

5. Enter the OS settings. “Full Name”, “Organization” and “Internet Explorer Home Page”.

6. Specify Administrator’s password. And click on “Finish”.

Create a Deployment Point

Here we’ll define the rules and parameters involved in the deployment.

1. “Deployment Workbench” > “Deploy” > “Deployment Points” > “New”.

2. Since we are going to use the distribution share on this computer, select “Lab or single-server deployment”.

3. Select a deployment point name “LAB”.

4. Leave deselected the options for this upgrade scenarios.

5. Select “Ask if an image should be captured”.

6. Leave deselected the option “Ask user to set the local Administrator Password” (already included on the task sequence).

7. Leave deselected the option “Ask user for a product key”.

8. On the next step, the Distribution (“Distribution$”) folder should be selected as the Share. Click on “Next”.

9. Select “Automatically determine the location on the network”. And click on “Finish”.

Now the deployment point is created, we now have to generate the boot media from the deployment point; this media will be used to create the reference computer.

10. “Deployment Workbench” > “Deploy” > “Deployment Points” > “LAB” > “Properties”.

11. Check on the “General Tab” the “x64” option for “Platforms Supported”. Also you can verify on “WindowsPE” tab other options like drivers or background image.

12. Now to generate the boot files:“Deployment Workbench” > “Deploy” > “Deployment Points” > “LAB” > “Update”.

This last step could take several minutes to complete, so be patient. It takes a while generate from scratch the ISO and WIM files used to boot environments. After it completes, you can find LiteTouchPE files inside “%distribution%\Boot\”

Notice that I haven’t used the option “Out-of-Box Drivers”. Windows 7 contains almost every hardware driver available on the market, you won’t get much problem with this. But MDT has a simple and effective way to handle device drivers, using “Groups” where you can add specific files depending on your need. For example: You could have a group of drivers with all the files for specific model of notebooks devices, other for desktop.

We’ll be reviewing how to handle applications, most specific Office 2007, within an MDT deployment on the next posts.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part II

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part III

Cheers!