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Igor Igor 71 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 3 3 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Cobbler was designed for this.
Improve this answer. Michael Hampton Michael Hampton k 39 39 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Have you ever used Foreman?
Any idea on the difference between the two? Cobbler is for mass deployment of operating systems and foreman is an orchestration tool which works best with Puppet as far as I know.
HowToForge has a great article to get such a process started here Basically, the following is a high-level list of activities that would be required: Establish a DHCP server that can support the number of clients VLANs and such Create an HTTP server that can host the installation Create a kickstart script for the installation.
The kickstart can be based off the ks-anaconda. Nick V Nick V 1 1 gold badge 2 2 silver badges 7 7 bronze badges. When talking about distribution shares we also have to know what is a deployment point. A deployment point is a subset of files in the distribution share which are necessary to install and configure Windows on a target computer.
Deployment point defines the location of images, device drivers, updates and applications. With MDT we can utilize the task sequences feature to add updates, language packs, system packages and applications to particular image.
Task sequences can containing tasks and groups. Tasks are actions that are performed on some image. For example, task can be creating a partition, adding drivers, formatting the partition, installing operating system, etc. Groups are used to organize tasks that are related. With MDT we can add languages, and applications to offline images. We can create the LTI bootable media from the deployment workbench. Imaging is the process of taking a snapshot of the entire physical hard disk of the computer and storing it to a file, on some media.
The benefit of using an image is that we can customize the operating system with the software and settings that we prefer. Then we can deploy that customized system to any PC.
Prior to creating the reference computer and deploying a captured image of the reference computer, we have to install Windows Automated Installation Kit Windows AIK. This directory contains all of the tools and documentation included in this release. The core tools used in most Windows deployment scenarios are:.
Application Compatibility Toolkit provides the ability to evaluate and mitigate application compatibility issues before deploying new versions of Windows or Internet Explorer in your environment.
Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit Solution Accelerator enables you to assess your current IT infrastructure for a variety of technology migration projects. Answer files are files that provide answers to prompts during installation to help automate installations. Answer files are now in the XML format. The default name for answer files is Autounattend.
We can also add device drivers and third-party applications to our XML files. When we run the Windows setup program, we point Setup to the answer file.
The installation proceeds using the answers in the response file. If all of the necessary answers to setup configuration questions are included in the file, the installation will run and complete without our intervention. We can edit answer file to modify its settings and in that way change how Windows will be installed.
Prior to Windows Vista, a Windows installation media contained all the files necessary for the installation that were copied, one by one, to the target computer. With new Windows deployment methods, we use WIM image files which are file based, instead of older image files which are sector based. File based images give us more flexibility.
The smallest unit of information in a WIM image is a file instead of a sector. A WIM image is hardware independent and has a unique single instance storage structure. Single instance storage allows a file to be stored once and be referenced multiple times within an image. That saves a lot of space. For example, if we take sector based image of an 4 GB Hard drive, we could deploy it only to the Hard drive that has at least 4 GB of space. At first stage of Windows installation Windows PE , you can create and delete partitions of a physical drive.
A set of options allows you to delete existing partitions, create new ones, specify their types and formats, letters and labels, choose a target partition for installation. To validate the response file, use F5. Warnings and errors will be displayed in the message pane.
Using this option, remember that the footprint may be considerably exceeded. To add drivers to an automated installation, it is necessary to download them from the official website and. You can run scripts and installation of applications directly from there. You can automatically install applications, specify their settings, add registry entries and files, using the followings techniques:. Each of this techniques has its pros and cons, which should be considered as well the context of command execution.
For the period of testing, we recommend including standard tools of testing of all required configurations accessories, Microsoft management console, etc. If you intend to create an image of a test machine and use it on target workstations, you first have to prepare the test machine using SYSPREP.
Unless you meet this requirement, Microsoft does not provide the product support. Sysprep prepares a Microsoft Windows installation for replication, auditing, and delivery to a client. Sysprep deletes the data of a specific system from Windows, e. Each of these images can be used for further delivery on target devices. The resulting image can be used in lite-touch and zero-touch application deployment strategies.
Need help with application packaging and deployment? All rights reserved. Sitemap Privacy Policy Cookies Imprint. Multiboot: At times, one may desire to install a new operating system version without having to do away with the old or existing operating system. In such a case, one should be in a position to support a Multiboot configuration also known as dual boot configuration. In this configuration, one should have two different operating systems in two distinct hard drive partitions.
With this kind of configuration, there is always a prompt that one should see on start-up asking one which operating system one would like to run either the new one or old one. For instance, one can have windows seven and windows eight both in one's computer. In case one wants to change over to the other operating system, one should just restart one's computer. Remote network installation: Remote network installation is another magnificent way of installing an OS.
This especially comes into place where physical media is not required during the installation. One should put all one's windows installation files and configurations in a network drive. The Pre-boot Execution Environment allows one's system to run onto the network and access all the installation files on the network drive.
In this kind of installation, one should have a single centralized server to undertake all the installation. Image deployment: This simply involves cloning the particular OS image to another PC if there is need for the machine to be deployed. On start-up, one should realize that the windows information is similar to that of the old system and hence one must not go through the installation program when bringing up a computer onto the network.
Hard drive partitioning is a prompt that one should come across when installing any windows operating system especially if it is a first time installation. Presently, most of the available computers run a Master Boot Record Partition Table which supports four partitions on one hard disk.
The newer Globally Unique Identifier partition table supports partitions. Dynamic: A dynamic disk partition is one that has the capability to deny addition of any new drive in addition to spanning of data from the basic partition into the newly installed drive. This dynamic disk partition can be supported by several Windows operating systems. Basic: A basic disk partition is an idea of Microsoft. This either has a Disk Operating System or Windows installed on it.
It can bear primary and logical partitions with logical drives also inclusive. Primary: A primary partition is basically a partition that one's operating system can boot from. A primary partition allows performance of Multiboot capability where one of the partitions is designed as the active partition which automatically launches once the computer is powered on.
Extended: Extended partitions come into use when one wants to have more than four partitions in a disk.
One can also create more partitions on the extended partition. Extended partitions are not as flexible as primary partitions since one can't boot from them. Logical: Logical partitions are basically partitions that are created inside of an extended partition. An OS cannot boot from such partitions.
File systems must be created so that any information can be written on a particular drive.
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