WDS

http://sharepointgeorge.com/2009/windows-deployment-services-waik-and-windows-7-part1/

http://sharepointgeorge.com/2009/2009/windows-deployment-services-waik-windows-7-part-2/

http://sharepointgeorge.com/2009/windows-deployment-services-waik-windows-7-part-3/

http://sharepointgeorge.com/2009/windows-deployment-services-waik-windows-7-part-4/

Windows Deployment Services, WAIK & Windows 7 – Part 1/4

I have been known to be at the cutting edge of technology, early adoption of Microsoft technologies is a must and this time round nothing is going to change.  I first played with Windows Deployment Services (WDS) back in the day when it was referred to as Remote Installation Services (RIS) and had first exposure to the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) back when it was in beta and so was Vista at the time.  I took the plunge and deployed Windows Vista using Light Touch deployment via WDS and the WAIK a month after Vista was released to the enterprise and today I will be providing you with step by step instructions on how you can do the same with Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2.

In this 4 part series I will begin my focus in providing you with instructions in setting up your WDS role on a Windows 2008 R2 server, with part’s 2 and 3 focusing on utilising the WAIK to create your necessary xml files that are needed for light touch deployment and finish off our setup in part 4 by introducing the capability to inject any necessary drivers to your original “install images”.  This article is assuming you have a Windows 2008 R2 server ready to rock and roll with, so let’s begin!

With the introduction of Roles and Features there is no need to have the Windows 2008 R2 media at hand as all roles and features are included in the initial installation albeit inactive. In order to setup WDS navigate to Administrative Tools / Server Manager and click on Roles on the left navigation pane and then click on Add Role on the right navigation pane. This will invoke the Add Roles Wizard that we have become familiar with in Windows 2008.

Click Next.  Select Windows Deployment Services as your Server Role.

Click Next.  One of the many things that Microsoft have improved upon lately is their thorough explanations when deploying roles and features within Windows 2008.  Below is an introduction to Windows Deployment Services and things to note regarding the configuration and installation.

Click Next.  The below role services are automatically checked.

Click Next.  The below confirmation screen is displayed.

Click Next. The installation will now proceed with the results displayed as per the below screen capture.

Once the installation has completed, navigate to Administrative Tools / Windows Deployment Services. When you click on the server node you will receive the below warning message;

Windows Deployment Services is not configured.
This server is not configured. To configure this server, first verify that you are a local administrator.

Right click on the server and select configure server.  The below wizard is invoked.  You will need to ensure that the below pre-requisites are met before WDS can become functional.

Click Next.  Select your Remote Installation Folder Location.  As per the below description, ensure that you choose a partition that is large enough to hold your images.

Click Next.  Select your PXE settings.  You have the option to prestage your client which is when you create a computer account object in Active Directory Users and Computers and map this computer object to a physical computer.  This then becomes a known client.  In my example below I have selected Respond to all computers for simplicity.

Click Next.  The server will then go through the configuration process until you receive the below confirmation.  You now have the ability to add your images to the server.  I will leave the Add images to the server now checked which will invoke the Add image wizard.

Here I will add the Windows 7 boot and install images.  These images are originally located under the sources folder on your Windows 7 DVD.  The two files that you need to locate are, install.wim and boot.wim.  In my example below I have copied these 2 files to the WDS server under C:\Windows7 Images.

You now have the option to select an existing image group or create a new one.  I have gone ahead and created a group called Windows 7.

Click Next.  The wizard will detect my 2 images, 1 boot being the boot.wim file and 1 install install image being the install.wim file that I had copied from the Windows 7 media to my image path below.

Click Next.  The images are now added to the server and will be listed as per the below 2 screen shots.

Below is the Windows 7 install image added from our media.

Below is the Boot image added from our media.

This concludes the first part of this article.  In part 2 of this series we will shift our attention to the Windows Automated Installation Kit otherwise known as the “WAIK” where we will concentrate our efforts in automating the PXE boot by creating a WDSunattend.xml file and then continue in part 3 by automating the Out of Box experience on our Windows 7 install image by creating an Imageunattend.xml.

Windows Deployment Services, WAIK & Windows 7 – Part 2/4

Posted by George Khalil on Sep 16, 2009 in Windows, Windows 2008 R2, Windows 7

30

Welcome back to the second part of this series and in the next 2 article’s I will be focusing our efforts on creating the necessary xml answer files to automate the deployment of our Windows 7 image via Windows Deployment Services (WDS).   In part 1, I provided you with step by step instructions on installing and configuring your WDS role on your Windows 2008 R2 machine. If you missed it, you can access part 1 here. Our focus in today’s article revolves around the creation of the WDSUnattend.xml file that is required to automate the Windows Pre Execution Boot for WDS clients.

Our tool of trade for today is the Windows Automated Installation Kit (commonly referred to as the WAIK or Windows AIK), and this was first introduced by Microsoft when Windows Vista was released for IT professionals assisting them with the deployment of Windows Vista.  It’s primary focus is to create the necessary answer files to deploy and customise the Windows install image and to also automate the WDS side of things or what is commonly referred to as windowsPE, more on this later.  Windows System Image Manager (also referred to as Windows SIM) is the actual tool required to create the XML answer files and is part of the WAIK.

The first thing you need to do is download the WAIK for Windows 7 which is quite a hefty download (1706.6MB) and can be accessed from the Microsoft Download site here.  Included in the WAIK as mentioned already is the Windows System Image Manager (WSIM) amongst other tools such as documentation, the Deployment Imaging Servicing and Management Tool (DISM), the User State Migration Tool (USMT) and the Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT).

Once you have downloaded the WAIK ISO you can easily burn the disc image using Windows 7 Disc Image burner and then install the entire package on your “technician computer”.  Typically the technician computer is another PC that must be running Windows 2003, Windows Vista or Windows 7.  The below welcome splash screen is what you will see when you begin the installer.

Click on Windows AIK setup to begin the installation.

Click Next

Agree to the terms and then click Next.  The installation is pretty straight forward after this point.  Once the installation has completed you can then launch the Windows System Image Manager application which is located under the Microsoft Windows AIK All Programs folder.

We will now need to create our working folder and copy the install.wim from our Windows 7 source media, typically I will create a folder on the technician PC and call it Windows AIK Distribution Share.

Once we have created our folder and copied across our install.wim we can now proceed to open our image via Windows System Image Manager, File / Select Windows Image.  Browse to the Windows AIK Distribution Share that we created and select the install.wim file.  At this instance you will receive the below warning in which we will click Yes.

It will now proceed and create the catalog file that is required.  This process can take a while and will only need to be completed once.  Please note, If the WIM file contains multiple images then you must select the image to open from the WIM file (e.g., Windows 7 BUSINESS or Windows 7 ENTERPRISE).

Upon completion, your catalog will be created and the components and packages will be listed under the Windows Image pane located on the left hand corner of WSIM.

We can now proceed to create our first answer file by clicking on File / New Answer File.

You can see that the Answer File can potentially be made up of 7 distinct sections as per the above screen capture.  These are 7 possible stages in the deployment of your operating system whether it be Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 2008.  These stages are also referred to as passes and you may not necessarily need to utilise every single pass.  Because we are utilising WDS for our deployment of Windows 7, we will be required to create 2 XML Answer files using WSIM and these will be named as follows;

• WDSUnattend.xml (This will automate the windowsPE which encompasses the login to our WDS server, the creation of our partitions, selecting the partition to install Windows 7, and the language to run setup in.  The WDSUnattend.xml is eventually attached to the Client Tab of the properties of your WDS server.)
• ImageUnattend.xml (This will primarily automate the Out of Box Experience (OOBE) of your Windows 7 Install Image.  These are the screens that you would normally fill out after the first boot of your system, such as the creation of a local user account.  The ImageUnattend.xml is eventually attached to the General Tab of the Image Properties in WDS).

So let’s begins with WDSUnattend.xml.  Part 3 will discuss the ImageUnattend.xml in a lot more detail so stay tune for that article.

Now that we have created our Answer File albeit a blank canvas we need to inject the various components for our WDSUnattend.xml.  You do so by expanding the components under the Windows Image pane and then right clicking on the required component and inserting the relevant Pass to our Answer File.  At first sight this may seem to be very daunting as there are so many components that need to be matched off to the correct Pass.

The Components and Passes required for our WDSUnattend.xml are as follows;

	Component	Configuration pass
1	Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE\SetupUILanguage	windowsPE
2	Microsoft-Windows-Setup\DiskConfiguration\Disk\CreatePartitions\CreatePartition	windowsPE
3	Microsoft-Windows-Setup\DiskConfiguration\Disk\ModifyPartitions\ModifyPartition	windowsPE
4	Microsoft-Windows-Setup\WindowsDeploymentServices\	windowsPE

Please note that when expanding the components list, ensure that you expand the component to the lowest level before adding the setting to the relevant Pass.  This ensures that the selected setting and all its parent settings are also added to the answer file in the single step.

Our first component required is the “Microsoft Windows International Core-WinPE”.

As per Microsoft’s documentation, Windows Preinstallation Environment (commonly known as Windows PE) is referred to as a minimal operating system designed to prepare a computer for Windows installation. It can be used to:

• Start a computer with no operating system (a bare-metal system)
• Partition and format hard drives
• Copy disk images or initiate Windows Setup from a network share

We will be automating the WindowsPE via the WDSUnattend.xml Answer File that we are just about to create.

I will begin by locating  our first component Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE\SetupUILanguage as per the below screen capture and right click and select the appropriate Pass.  As you can see the only Pass available to me is “windowsPE” and by selecting this pass it will add the component to my answer file under the Answer File navigation pane.

We can now fill in the details of the component that we have just added on the right navigation pane.  In the example below I have specified the InputLocale, SystemLocale and UserLocale to be "en-AU" for Australia.  Please note that you can click F1 on any parameter field to reveal your options from the help file.

We also need to specify the subcomponent SetupUILanguage as per the below screen capture.

So to recap on what we have just achieved, we have entered 4 settings in our answer file.  As you can see from the Microsoft Windows International Core-WinPE component we had 3 settings to fill in and a sub component “SetupUILanguage” that also needed a setting entered as per the below;

Configuration pass	Component	Value
1 WindowsPE	Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE	InputLocale = <Input Locale> For example, en-AU or en-US SystemLocale = <System Locale> For example, en-AU or en-US UILanguage = <UI Language> For example, en-AU or en-US UserLocale = <User Locale> For example, en-AU or en-US
1 WindowsPE	Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE\SetupUILanguage	UILanguage = <UI Language> For example, en-AU or en-US

The next steps involved are 2,3 and 4 from our component list which is all about configuring our disk and preparing it for install.  As part of any Windows setup process when you boot into Windows PE (pre-execution boot) you are provided with the opportunity to create and format disk partitions preparing it for installation.  In order to automate this process, we need to specify these details in our WDSUnattend.xml answer file.  We will now focus on the below highlighted components.

	Component	Configuration pass
1	Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE\SetupUILanguage	windowsPE
2	Microsoft-Windows-Setup\DiskConfiguration\Disk\CreatePartitions\CreatePartition	windowsPE
3	Microsoft-Windows-Setup\DiskConfiguration\Disk\ModifyPartitions\ModifyPartition	windowsPE
4	Microsoft-Windows-Setup\WindowsDeploymentServices	windowsPE

As per our previous exercise, we will need to inject the necessary components into our Answer File and this case we will start by adding Microsoft-Windows-Setup\DiskConfiguration\Disk setting to the WindowsPE Pass as follows.

Right click on Disk Configuration and add setting to Pass1 windowsPE as per the below screen capture.

This setting will now appear in the Answer File pane within Windows System Image Manager.

We will now right click on DiskConfiguration and select Insert new Disk. The details area for Disk will now need to be set so the WillWipeDisk is set to true.

We will now right click on Create Partitions and select Insert new create partition.

We will now proceed and create our Windows Partition and then we will need to Modify the Partition specifying details such as Label, Drive Letter and File System Format.  Your results should look similar to the below screen captures.

Answer File Structure

Create Partition Details

Modify Partition Details

The last component that we need to inject is Microsoft-Windows-Setup\WindowsDeploymentServices\ImageSelection\InstallTo providing details on which partition our Windows 7 Image should install to.  Again, we will right click on the Microsoft-Windows-Setup\WindowsDeploymentServices\ImageSelection\InstallTo  component and select Add setting to Pass1 windowsPE.

The settings required for the above component is captured in the below screen shot.  We have simply specified that our eventual Windows 7 image will install directly on the first partition of our selected disk.

In summary, the below are the above settings in text form;

WindowsPE	Microsoft-Windows-Setup\DiskConfiguration	WillShowUI = OnError
1 WindowsPE	Microsoft-Windows-Setup\DiskConfiguration\Disk	DiskID = 0 WillWipeDisk = true
1 WindowsPE	Microsoft-Windows-Setup\DiskConfiguration\Disk\CreatePartitions\CreatePartition	Order = 1 Size = Type = Primary
1 WindowsPE	Microsoft-Windows-Setup\DiskConfiguration\Disk\ModifyPartitions\ModifyPartition	Active = true Extend = false Format = NTFS Label = Windows Operating System Volume Order = 1 PartitionID = 1
1 WindowsPE	Microsoft-Windows-Setup\WindowsDeploymentServices\ImageSelection	WillShowUI = OnError
1 WindowsPE	Microsoft-Windows-Setup\WindowsDeploymentServices\ImageSelection\InstallTo	DiskID = 0 PartitionID = 1

We have now completed the settings and passes required for our WDSUnattend.xml Answer File which we can now save.  Upon saving your xml file, Windows System Image Manager will check for any warnings or errors.

We will now apply the WDSUnattend.xml file to our WDS server as follows.  Navigate to the Windows Deployment Services Management Console and right click on your Server object and select properties.  Click on the Client tab and select Enable unattend installation and you will notice that you will need to specify a separate WDSunattend.xml file for the differing architectures.  Select Browse and navigate to your saved xml file and then click on Apply and OK.

We have come to the conclusion of the second part of this series and have successfully created and applied our WDSUnattend.xml file to your WDS Server, automating the PXE boot.  In the next article we will focus our efforts in creating an ImageUnattend.xml file which will be applied against our Windows 7 image or commonly referred to as our  “Install” image automating the Out of Box Experience.

Stay tuned!  If you would like to be notified of future articles, you can do so by subscribing via RSS, or have articles directly sent to your email by subscribing on the right navigation bar.

Windows Deployment Services, WAIK & Windows 7 – Part 3/4

Posted by George Khalil on Sep 22, 2009 in Windows, Windows 2008 R2, Windows 7

29

We are back again and in today’s article we will continue our efforts in automating our Windows 7 deployment via Windows Deployment Services utilising the WAIK tool and the creation of our XML Answer files.  In Part 2 of this series we focused on the creation of the WDSUnattend.xml file that is required to automate the Windows Pre Execution Boot for our WDS clients and took care of the partitioning of our disks.  If you missed part 2 of this series, you can access it here. Today we continue our efforts in utilising the Windows System Image Manager (WSIM) to create our ImageUnattend.xml which will be specifically designed to automate the Out of Box Experience (OOBE) of our Windows 7 Enterprise install.

In our last article I introduced WSIM and the steps required to create an answer file.  I also went into some detail regarding the 7 distinct sections that make up an answer file that reflect the 7 possible stages in the deployment of your operating system, in our case Windows 7.  As you recall these stages are referred to as Passes and you may not necessarily need to utilise every single pass in an XML Answer File.  Our WDSUnattend.xml file that we created in Part 2 primarily focused on the windowsPE pass however our ImageUnattend.xml that we are creating in this article will utilise the specialize and oobeSystem passes.  So let’s begin!

Launch WSIM and select File / New Answer File.  The first area that we will focus on is the specialize pass which we will provide details for the automation of the joining of the machine to the domain.

The minimum components and passes required for our ImageUnattend.xml are listed as follows;

Component	Configuration pass
1	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup	specialize
2	Microsoft-Windows-UnattendedJoin\Identification	specialize
3	Microsoft-Windows-International-Core	oobeSystem
4	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup	oobeSystem
5	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup\OOBE	oobeSystem
6	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup\UserAccounts	oobeSystem
7	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup\UserAccounts\Administrator	oobeSystem
8	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup\UserAccounts\DomainAccounts	oobeSystem
9	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup\UserAccounts\LocalAccounts	oobeSystem

As a refresher, I will go through the process of adding our first component (Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup) to our Answer File Pane and it’s required settings.  Recall that I went through this process in some detail in part 2 of this series.

Right click on the required component and select Add Setting to Pass4 specialize.

This will then appear in the Answer File pane as follows;

We will make the following changes to the properties of the Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup component as per the below screen capture.  You will notice that in the ComputerName section I have specified “*” as I am letting WDS do the naming under the AD DS tab of the properties of the WDS server.

In the below screen capture, I have specified a Client Naming Policy under the properties of our WDS server.  The following format GK%03# will name my machines in the following format; GK001, GK002, GK003 etc.

I have listed the rest of the settings in text form for the components listed in the table above.  These are as follows;

4 specialize	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup	ComputerName =*RegisteredOrganization =<Name> RegisteredOwner =<Name>
4 specialize	Microsoft-WindowsUnattendedJoin\Identification	DebugJoin = falseJoinDomain = <Domain Name> UnsecureJoin = true
7oobeSystem	Microsoft-Windows-International-Core	InputLocale = en-Au or en-USSystemLocale = en-Au or en-US UILanguage = en-Au or en-US UserLocale = en-Au or en-US
7oobeSystem	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup	RegisteredOrganization =<Name>RegisteredOwner =<Name> ShowWindowsLive =false TimeZone = <AU Eastern Standard Time>
7oobeSystem	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup\OOBE	HideEULAPage =trueHideWirelessSetupInOOBE = true NetworkLocation =Work ProtectYourPC = 1 SkipMachineOOBE = true (This setting has now been deprecated) SkipUserOOBE = true (This setting has now been deprecated)
7oobeSystem	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup\UserAccounts\AdministratorPassword	Value = **************
7oobeSystem	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup\UserAccounts\DomainAccountList	Action = AddListItemDomain = <Domain Name>
7oobeSystem	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup\UserAccounts\DomainAccountList\DomainAccount	Action = AddListItemGroup =Administrators Name =Domain Admins
7oobeSystem	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup\UserAccounts\DomainAccountList\LocalAccounts\LocalAccount	Action =AddListItemDisplayName =<Name of Local Admin Account> e.g. HelpDesk Group =Administrators Name = HelpDesk
7oobeSystem	Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup\UserAccounts\DomainAccountList\LocalAccounts\LocalAccount\Password	Value = ********************

In summary, the oobeSystem settings above (Windows Out of Box Experience) automates the initial configuration tasks that end users normally encounter when installing Windows 7 or Windows Vista.

The above settings are the required minimum settings to fully automate the Windows 7 Enterprise “install” image, however you can add other components such as setting a default theme (Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup\Themes).

The complete Unattended Windows Setup Reference can be found in the WAIK help area and on the Microsoft TechNet Site here.

Once you have completed adding any further settings to your ImageUnattend.xml file you will need to validate your settings and then save the file as “ImageUnattend.xml”.

We will now navigate to your WDS server and launch the Windows Deployment Services Management Console.  Expand Servers and then your Server Name and  click on Install Images.  Our Windows 7 Install Image should be listed as per the below screen capture.  Recall that this was added in Part 1 of this series when we first configured our WDS Server.

Right Click on our Image and select properties.  Under the General Tab, click on select file and browse for the ImageUnattend.xml file that we saved earlier.

We have now applied our WDSUnattend.xml which automates the WDS Pre-Execution Boot (part 2 of this series) and our ImageUnattend.xml which automates the OOBE of our Windows 7 “install” image.

Now is a good time to review your WDS Server settings within the Windows Deployment Services Management console by right clicking on the server and selecting properties.  Under the AD DS tab you can specify your Client Naming Policy and specify your Computer Account Location.  Also ensure that your WDSUnattend.xml file that we created in part 2 is applied to the Client tab – Unattend file settings area.

We are now ready to rock and roll and attempt to deploy our first Windows 7 Image via PXE boot.  When your machine is starting up press the relevant Function key combination to access the network PXE boot which should then detect your WDS Server and then press F12 again to launch the Windows PE Boot Image.

Once the boot.wim has completed loading, you will receive the below screen capture, allowing you to select your Windows 7 Install Image. If you have multiple Install Images they will also be listed here.

Click Next.

That’s it!  Your installation will now continue without any user input as this is taken care of by our ImageUnattend.xml file.

This concludes this part of the series.  In our next and final article I will show you how to inject any necessary drivers that may have been missed by Windows.  I have left this to the end as it is only until you deploy your first Image to your new or existing hardware that you will be aware of these missing drivers.

As always, if you would like to be notified of future articles, you can do so by subscribing via RSS, or have articles directly sent to your email by subscribing on the right navigation bar.