WDS and VMWare

[plexer]

Has anyone successfully tested wds for creating/restoring xp images in a virtual environment specifically vmware server?

I've got the server set up and all the images fro capturing and deploying images.

I can pxe boot a virtual client and connect to the wds server and run the collection image but if I choose upload to wds server and enter the server name then hit connect it just sits there.

If I don't choose the option to upload the image it is currently doing just that and creating the image on c: drive of the client happily.

I added the vmware nic drivers to my capture image thinking it might be that.

Ben

[FatBoy]

I added the vmware nic drivers to my capture image thinking it might be that.

Ben

You sound like your in the right direction, I had exactly the same problem (Not in vmware tho) and adding the drivers to the boot/capture.wim fixed the problem for me

If you need any info on this let me know ;-)

[plexer]

I think I added the drivers into the wrong image and not the one that was added to wds so I've redone it.

I imaged the machine to it's hard drive and then copied that across to the wds server and imported it.

I created a new vmware client and pxe booted and then selected deploy xp image.

But now all I get is a black box in the center of the screen with an ok button and a red cross to close it.

Clicking ok reboots the client.

Ben

[FatBoy]

I think I can help you here the msg probably says "WdsClient: An error occurred while starting networking" as I have had exactly the same problem at exactly the same point.

Follow this article for a quick fix (adding the network driver on the fly): Error message when you start a PXE client to connect to a WDS server on a Windows Server 2003 SP1-based computer: "WdsClient: An error occurred while starting networking"

I would to start with tho get a command prompt up "SHIFT+F10" when you get to the point were you get the msg. When ipconfig etc and see if you have an ip address. If you do then it's a different problem from mine, if no ip however follow the article and you should be able to add the drive you need and get it to the next stage (The hard bit is finding the correct driver!). I use combination of the dell website and network card’s manufactures website to get the correct one, not exactly what the Microsoft article says

If you want to add the driver to the capture/boot.wim (so the drivers are embedded in the WDS for future use) follow this article: Angelo’s blog Adding drivers to WDS boot images It's almost complete instructions for adding drivers (there was a couple of bits I had to work out).

EXTRA info to save confusion, you don't add the network drivers to the image you have captured or want to deploy, you add the drivers to the wim's WDS uses to connect to the machines before the computer image is even copied over! Hope this makes sense

Hope this helps in some way ;-)

[plexer]

When I get to the point that the box appears shift + f10 does nothing.

Ben

[plexer]

I've tried adding the drivers again the funny thing is that my boot.wim in the image I've used for the deploy only has 1 boot image in it.

Ben

[plexer]

Ok I've recreated my deploy image from the original visat boot.wim and added the drivers to it as needed.

Now the issue causing the black box turned out to be ram allocation I had only given it 256mb then I upped it to 300mb and the box displayed its contents telling me I needed 512mb.

So I upped the memory to 512mb and it allowed me to pick the locality and carry on to picking an image however it now tells me there are no images available.

Ben

[FatBoy]

I upped it to 300mb and the box displayed its contents telling me I needed 512mb.
Ben

Interesting, maybe as it was a different msg you wasn't at the point were you could press shift+F10 (It worked for me ) Also just in case... how did you up and ram and what made you think you mite need to be that? just wondering..... :-)

The only time this has happened was if the image I was trying to use wasn't 100% made for the perticular PC model I was trying to put it on, which happens sometimes anyway. I'm not 100% sure but I think I have sometimes be able to resolve this by updating the BIOS (by not sure I mean this could have been a fix for something else!) If your using vmware would this be possible anyway?

[plexer]

I just turned off the virtual client and allocated more ram from the settings for it.

Twas just a hunch I tried and then googlingthe ram requirements does indeed say it needs 512mb.

I'm trying to create a generic image with all the drivers for my different machines in order to reduce the number of images I have.

I'm giving up on it for now as I've spent 4 days on it now and only made a little progress.

I just tried to boot 2 physical clients from the wds server and one desktop just rebooted after I hit F12 for network the laptop let me choose the image to boot from and then died with an error.

Ben

[FatBoy]

oh sorry you increased the ram on the virtual client sorry my mistake I was completely on the wrong train of thought.

Ouch the other 2 phyical machines failing is not good well post back if you start on it again and need someone to bounce idea's off of. I'll do my best

[Stino]

I'm also trying to capture an image of a winXP desktop.
Sysprepped the client with reseal, regenerate SID, PnP,...
Added the vmware drivers in the boot.wim of my WDS-server and created the capture-image from this boot.wim.

I can get to the capture-wizard but when then I need to select a volume, there is nothing to select.

I'm using a W2K8-dedicated WDS server. My A.D. and DHCP are on a different server.
I'm using a boot.wim file from a vista CD (not the server 2008 disk)...

I WANT TO GET THIS TO WORK!

I there somebody who has a clue?

Thanx in advance,

Oh yeah, I know that this thread seems dead for 2 years now. Maybe there has been some light in the darkness now.


stijn

[plexer]

Are you trying to capture a physical client? Is it a sata hard drive?

[Stino]

Are you trying to capture a physical client? Is it a sata hard drive?

No, it's a virtual machine. But I still have the untouched and unsysprepped physical machine.
In the physical machine I use a sata drive. The ESXi where the VM resides is also SATA...

Do you think I need to inject the sata drivers of the ESXi for the capture to work?

[andydis]

had exactly the same problem , its drivers.



Try making 2 VM machines , set both to 512MB RAM

but when going through the wizard set one to VISTA and one to XP you will find they are different network cards and therefore require different drivers.


i think the vista is intel 1000 something that works with PXE and WDS and boot.wim but the XP one doesnt.

I have exactly the same setup as you. esxi 4 with sata HDD

[PiqueABoo]

Haven't ever looked at this on an ESXi, but you can probably force your XP VM (preferably before you install the OS) to use the virtual Intel NIC the same way you can in other VMWare products by editing this into the associated VMX file:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"