Deployment Solution

Hello Everyone

We use the Altiris Deployment Server to deploy W2K8 and W2K3 Images. All W2K3 Images are working perfectly, but W2K8 don't want to.

I install Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 manually and want to take the Image, so far no problems. The Server is in a Workgroup and the Image is created successfully and everything seems ok. I can deploy the Image also, but have to manually use PXE boot, because the "prepare with Sysprep" in the Image create job kills the network driver..

After I found this out, compared with the device manager and really, there was no network driver. If I re-install the driver its working fine, but it cannot be the solution to manually install the driver on each deployed server?!

Thanks in advantage for all suggesetions & tipps.

You just need to add required network drivers to Driver Database Manager for Deploy Anywhere on console. Deploy Image task has Deploy Anywhere selected by default to insert the proper drivers into the OS during deployment.

Reference:  https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/using-driver-management-form-ds-console-manage-device-drivers-and-best-practices

Thanks.

Thanks for the information.

I will try this out asap and give feedback if it works.

EDIT: I'm not able to add any driver. Always get the error that no drivers were found to add. Really don't know what I'm doing wrong..

For plug and play to be able to recognise and use the driver, it needs to consist of an INF, CAT and SYS file as a minimum, plus any other support files such as DLLs that may be required. Some vendors ship their drives in the form of an EXE but this needs to be unpacked in order to be useable.

If you have a working O/S on an example of the hardware you are deploying the W2K8 image to, open device manager and check the Device ID of the NIC. Then check the INF file of the candidate driver and make sure it supports the Device ID presented by your NIC.  If it does not, then it's not the right driver.

Thanks for your information. I used the unpacked driver, but it does not recognize it in the Deploy Anywhere Driver Manager, but it is the right driver.

But I don't understand why I have do add this driver, because the driver is installed on the server from which I take the image.
We had already an Image which was exectly identical, and there it was working. Only the Deployment Server was changing..

Ok, maybe I found something. In the create job I unchecked the "Install additional device drivers" option. After the create job, the driver was not removed. Therefore I'm actually deploying the image to verify if everything works.