MDT – Deployment
Time to see whether we did everything right. Welcome to the last post in our MDT Deployment Guide and this post will show you what it looks like when deploying an O/S via MDT.
To get started we need to grab the boot images that are created from back in Part 4. If you head to your DeploymentShareBoot folder you will find a LiteTouch iso and wim file. If you had x86 selected you would have a LiteTouch iso and wim file for both x86 and x64. However in our guide we only created the x64 versions. If you have a WDS server you can import the LiteTouch_x64.wim file directly into the Boot folder. This will allow you to PXE boot your devices off the network and connect to the MDT Deployment share. Alternatively you can use the .iso file and burn it to disk or to USB drive. Because we are currently doing this lab in a virtualised environment I have just attached the iso file to boot a Virtual Machine from. I will deal with some of the options for creating boot media in a later post, but for now use whatever method you are comfortable with in order to create your boot media for this LiteTouch_x64 file.
When booting up the device (Desktop, Laptop, Virtual Machine etc) using the LiteTouch media you are presented with the following screen. You can configure a Static IP address if necessary, or click on “Run the Deployment Wizard” to proceed to the next step.
Add your credentials for connecting to the network shares. Its recommended to use a domain admin account but any credentials that can access the DeploymentShare$ share will do
The next screen gives you the opportunity to define the Computer Name, and whether to join a Domain or Workgroup. If you are joining a domain note that the credentials will pre-populate from the network shares page hence why I recommend a Domain Admin do this part of the installation. You can also specify an OU for the computer to be put in upon joining if you wish to change it from the normal “Computers” container.
NOTE!!! for the domain fields its recommended to use fqdn for domain names rather than just the NETBIOS capable one. Sometimes the machine doesnt join the domain with just the NETBIOS domain name.
The next 2 screens can just be left as default as we don’t want to restore data (this time) nor do we want to move data back (at this point in time)
When we get to the Locale and Time window you can see here that it is already populated with our NZ settings. This is from the boot.ini file edit we did a few posts back. Whilst this doesnt look like much time saved but if you ever have to build 400 machines like i did you will find this quite amazing.
This next window allows us to select the optional applications for install. If you remember we hid Classic Shell because it is included as a mandatory installation. However the other 3 applications that weren’t hidden we have the option to choose to install them. For this install we will be installing just Foxit PDF and 7.zip and leaving Notepad ++ off this build just as an example.
Click on Next and you are presented with this last window which gives you an overview of everything selected and defined in the build. Click on Begin to begin the installation
See the following screenshots to show you what the progress looks like. You will see the formatting and cop of the base installation files happens in the first 2 pages before rebooting and carrying on the installation. Use the following screens to reference your progress. Note that MDT will log in to the system and then proceed to silently install the applications.
Once ended you will get a Success, Warning or Error page. Hopefully your screen looks like mine does above in which case you can pat yourself on the back. In this last screenshot you will see that the Classic Shell start menu is installed and both 7-Zip and Classic Shell is installed and both working fine. If you chose to join a domain hopefully you are successful in that task as well
Thanks for sticking it out with me for the last 6 posts. Hopefully your environment was just as successful as mine but if not feel free to email me at admin@jhsolutions.co.nz. I promise I will try to get back to you as soon as it’s possible for me to. Over the month of October Ill be showing you how to configure WDS to PXE boot your MDTBoot image as well as how to customise your base image install. See you soon