Windows 7 Mass Deployment Question
Updated: 13 Jun 2010 | 12 comments
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1st question: I've been a Dos based PXE boot imager for many years and used Rdeploy to mass image computers right out of the box, Now with Windows 7 I'm told no more Dos. Everything is WINPE based.
So How do I take a 30 computers out of the box (no computer name, no altiris agent installed, etc) and push a Image job to 30 computers booted to PXE -WinPE, from a drag and drop Image job in the Deployment console or multicasting?
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Win7 mass deployment
I think the question is what kind of image are you going to distribute. Is it a sysprep image or is this a vanilla install of the OS you then want to tweak/modify?
Also, WinPE has benefits, but does not prevent you from deploying IMG images using the Windows version of RDeploy...
Besides, what version of DS are you referring too?
I'm on DS 6.9 SP3. I have a
I'm on DS 6.9 SP3.
I have a Syspreped Windows 7 image made.
I want to muticast it to 30 or more computers with win 7.
The computers are not registered in the DS as they are straight out of the box from Dell. All are the same model as the image I have.
In this case...
...nothing against DOS. It should work out as well. Win7 will of course require WinPE, but not for deploying an IMG image. DS 6.x still supports DOS and there's no requirement to have WinPE as preboot. If you look towards an unattended install of Win7, you will have to follow a different path and will require WinPE of course.
I hope this helps you Gadget?
BBC
Well, you already have the
Well, you already have the image so deploying it with DOS as the preboot should work. Winpe is requered when capturing an image. However, you might encounter a winload error that could be fixed using bcdedit commands while in WINPE :)
so tried it, if not Winpe it is.
Nelo
Yes I tryed dos and rdeploy
Yes I tryed dos and rdeploy and you get the bootloader problem.
I have experimented and if you pxe boot a computer out of the box to winpe, it will load (winpe that is) Dagent. Once that loads the computer will show up in the Deployment Console under new computers. Once all the computers load, drag all of them to the image job and I'm assuming by selecting rdeploy in the job that it is multicasting to them but I'm not sure.
Symantec's literature shows Ghost is not multicastable but I was told by a ghost user it is. All my images are ghost and to run rdeploy you can only use .img images.
Does anyone know if ghost is multicast compatible?
More Ghost
First off... I do not know if Ghost is multicast compatible.
However I have good experience using Ghost for imaging Windows 7 computers. And you can use DOS for PXE. Both for capturing and deploying and best of all is that you don't need to run BCDEDIT after deploying the image.
the only "problem" I have seen deploying a Windows 7 Image using GHOST from DOS is that I had to add -NTEXACT at the end of the parameters command line in the job.
just my 2 cents.
________________
/mlogan
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Thanks mlofan I will go back
Thanks mlofan
I will go back and try your suggestion as soon as I can get the time this week.
Ghost
It's been a while since I've dealt with Ghost, but I can say that it has always support multi-cast, I would be surprised if they removed that functionality from the product.
It is not the same scenario as RDeploy though. Ghost will use something called "Ghostcast" which would run on the server and all clients would connect to the server whereas RDeploy would create smaller groups and assign multiple masters and have 4-5 clients connect to each master.
Brian Hawver
Systems Engineer
Yaskawa America, Inc.
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Also from the original question...
Back to the original question, I am successfully deploying Windows 7 images via RDeploy and Linux. I would imagine you would be able to do so via DOS, however, DOS is a bit antiquated and does not allow you to fully take advantage of your NIC and full speed of your computer when imaging. Not to mention, there are probably mass storage device issues where DOS will have a hard time seeing your HDD.
Brian Hawver
Systems Engineer
Yaskawa America, Inc.
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Thanks Those of you reading
Thanks
Those of you reading this keep in mind I am trying to do zero touch in mass, 30 or more computers, not just 1.
One of my problems has been when I used Dos previously with XP I could select post configuration in Rdeploy and name each computer and join them to the Domain. This did not work for me for Windows 7. I am going back and retry this though.
With WinPE it was suggested I run a Modify Configuration job after the deploy image. The trouble with that is the computername is grayed out unless you choose a token. None of the tokens will give me the unique computername we use here.
However i got another suggestion to right click on new computers in the Ds console select new computer, name the computer with my unique name and type in a serial number. (Note: the computer can't be registered in the database when doing this) Boot the computer into Pxe choose winpe and as soon as it loads the dagent from Winpe it will recognize the serial number and be this new computer with my unique name. Then run the deploy image job with a modify configuration task 2nd ,with %name% as the computername and host name and I select the domain too which causes it to join the Domain.
One Note is the answer file has to have in Microsoft _windows _shell _setup, for the computername has computername there or you will get a parsing error.)
This works in Mass, uses only one answer file. (Note: I only touch the computers to boot them into Winpe.)
Also while researching this I saw alot of can't join domain or how do I join domain questions, this may help those people. PS. I do not add the computer to the OU ahead of time. The Modify Configuration task joins the computer to the domain.
I missed quoted something. I
I missed quoted something. I do not have to touch the computer at all as it boots into winpe automatically when it sees the job there.
In the Modify configuration task I had to choose Use tokens selecting %name% and type in the Domain name in the Domain field.
Nelo, you are correct you can
Nelo, you are correct you can use dos and rdeploy to distribute a image. And as you said its the creating the image thats has problems.Thanks, I had to go back and try that.
Thanks to everyone for their replys.
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