Windows Deployment Services – Part 2

In my first article, Windows Deployment Services, I covered the installation of Microsoft Windows Deployment Services for Windows 2008 R2. If you’ve followed the article then you will have an installation of WDS and configured to respond to PXE clients. However, it isn’t much use at the moment because we don’t have any images to boot into or install.

 

Create a Boot Image

First thing that needs to be done is configure a boot image which will allow client machines to PXE boot into and give us a basic interface so we can choose the installation image (which we’ll cover later)

To create a boot image you need access to an operating system DVD disk or have an expanded ISO image. From my own experience it is best to use the latest operating system for the boot image as latter OS installations using an earlier PXE / boot image can cause problems. I am using the source files from Windows 2008 R2 which I downloaded from my TecthNet subscription and expanded using WinRAR

• Start Windows Deployment Services (located under Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Windows Deployment Services)
• Navigate to “Boot Images” under your WDS Server of the MMC
• Right click and select “Add Boot Image”

• In the new dialogue box window navigate to the folder location where you have expanded the DVD ISO image or the DVD drive with a Operating System
• Select the “Sources” folder from the OS source files root
• Click the file boot.wim which is a Windows Imaging Format

• Confirm your selection is correct and then select Next
• You can then rename the images or leave the defaults, I’ve left the default values; click Next

The image will now be loaded to the WDS server and a summary screen displayed if the task completes successfully.

The next step is optional but I’d recommend setting a default boot image so clients can boot into an image without waiting for a choice to be made.

• Click on your WDS server so that it has the focus and right click to select “Properties”

• Select the tab “Boot” from the “Properties” dialogue box

Use the Select button to choose the boot image file that we uploaded a minute ago; in my case I’m using Windows 2008 R2 which is only 64bit and so the choice is easy I just select the boot.wim for the x64 architecture.

 

Installation Image

Setting up the installation image is very similar to the boot image, but you may want to create a folder structure to make the separation of different OS easier.

• Start Windows Deployment Services (located under Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Windows Deployment Services)
• Navigate to “Install Images” under your WDS Server of the MMC
• Right click and select “Add Image Group”
• Choose a name for the image group, in this case I am using Windows 2008 R2 so I’ve created a Image group called “W2K8R2-Images”; Select “Ok”
• Now right click on the newly created “Image Group” and select “Add Install Image”
• In the new dialogue box window navigate to the folder location where you have expanded the DVD ISO image or the DVD drive with a Operating System
• Select the “Sources” folder from the OS source files root
• Click the file install.wim which is a Windows Imaging Format and Open

You then have a list of available images within the image file that was just selected. You can leave the default option and select all images or you can remove the ticks to only include images you know you are going to use

• Select “Next” and your choice with be "summarised” for you to check and select “Next” again

The image will now be loaded to the WDS server and a summary screen displayed if the task completes successfully.

Now the WDS server has a boot image and install images

 

Testing the WDS Configuration

 

Make sure your client computer or Hyper-V instance is enabled for PXE (or network boot) and this selected as the client boots up.

In the first article in this series I suggested that Unknown Clients continue automatically unless Esc is pressed. Clients will start the PXE process but will then be held for approval on the WDS server, the client will look like:

The client will need to be approved on the WDS server

Start up WDS, if it is not already running

• Navigate to the “Pending Devices” folder and highlight the request ID (note the number on client matches that on the server.
• Right-click and select “Name and Approve”

The client machine after a few seconds will continue PXE boot using the boot image we created.

Once the boot process has completed the splash screen will appear and clearly indicates we have booted using Windows Deployment Services

Click Next and you are prompted for a username and password to authenticate (this can be used to allocate images based on security settings)

Once authenticated a list of images are presented which you can choose from to install. (note this screenshot shows more images than I covered during the install image section)

Next screen should be familiar as it asks “Where do you want to install Windows?” Accept the default and click Next

Windows will now Install

That’s it the process can be streamlined by using unattend.xml files to skip all of the screens above as well as granular control of the OS deployment. But that is not for this article…