Advice Please

[jertsy]

Hi all

 

If you had a couple of weeks to get your O/S deployments ready, just the images not all PC's built, and you had no prior knowledge of MDT or WDS, so you have to learn it from scratch. What would you use? MDT or WDS?

 

I'm just weighing up what to go for with the time I have.

 

Any advice gratefully received.

[synaesthesia]

You'll need both - MDT to prepare the images (you don't NEED MDT but it will make things easier for you) and WDS to push it out to stations via PXE boot.

[Norphy]

MDT is built on top of WDS.

 

WDS will just capture and deploy an image and install drivers for you. MDT will do a lot more such as deploy additional software during the build process.

 

Learn MDT if you think you have the time. Use WDS and a fat image if you don't. To be honest, I suspect that using plain WDS is the safer route for now, use the time afterwards to get MDT set up and running.

[jertsy]

MDT is built on top of WDS.

 

WDS will just capture and deploy an image and install drivers for you. MDT will do a lot more such as deploy additional software during the build process.

 

Learn MDT if you think you have the time. Use WDS and a fat image if you don't. To be honest, I suspect that using plain WDS is the safer route for now, use the time afterwards to get MDT set up and running.

 

Thanks for the advice, best to be safe I guess!

[SHimmer45]

For deployment i used MDT on its own and just booted machines from USB currently, as we dont image very often however i will be looking at using WDS to out the MDT boot image to start the deployment.

[themightymrp]

I use MDT to install the master image and get everything sorted, then use WDS to capture and deploy it out to machines

[Sephiroth]

MDT all the way. Get WDS under your belt then start on MDT as it will save you heaps of time in the future. the learning curve is quite shallow for the basic deployment, but particularly with the latest versions, there are some very powerful settings in there.

[strawberry]

don't think that MDT will be a quick process. It takes a long time to create , test and deploy. It is very much worth it though. It's not just for new installs though, you can use it to install programs to existing computers and even allow teachers the ability to install their own programs!

[Norphy]

MDT all the way. Get WDS under your belt then start on MDT as it will save you heaps of time in the future. the learning curve is quite shallow for the basic deployment, but particularly with the latest versions, there are some very powerful settings in there.

 

I don't disagree but the poor sod only has a fortnight to get this done. I still think that he should get the basics sorted first then look at MDT (or SCCM if he's feeling really adventurous) later on.

[Sephiroth]

I don't disagree but the poor sod only has a fortnight to get this done. I still think that he should get the basics sorted first then look at MDT (or SCCM if he's feeling really adventurous) later on.

I completely agree with this, hence sort out WDS first, then look at MDT, not necessarily right now! Sorry for confusion.

[jertsy]

For deployment i used MDT on its own and just booted machines from USB currently, as we dont image very often however i will be looking at using WDS to out the MDT boot image to start the deployment.

 

Thanks!

[mikeyd101]

+1 for MDT, that's what I use here tho if i have a number of machines todo i also use clonezilla and just clone the disks from one machine to the next.

 

You have to be a bit careful about the number of single deployments you do concurrently from MDT, I found with our setup here the machine can only manage about 4-6 machines before taking a huge performance penalty (network or disk its a very old machine using as a server).

 

Main process is build your image (starting with the install media / iso), add oobe drivers to MDT (normally only need network, mass storage drivers to get you up and running) install software, do updates, unjoin domain, capture image, create a task schedule from captured image, build Win PE cd/usb and boot machine and deploy image. There are plenty of youtube videos around which explain in more detail.

 

I've tried looking at WDS and Multicast but couldn't get it working.

 

On saying all that MDT/WDS is a lot of work to get you to the point of deploying images. I normally just build first machine and then just clone the hdd for the next computer. Somehow I find it quicker to deploy.

 

If your short on time cloning might be the easiest option (no big learning overhead), you don't really need to learn much build your master machine and copy it, then when you have a copy you have 2 masters and can make 2 copies at a time. A clone for me normally takes about 10 minutes to clone then another 5-10 mins to unjoin / rejoin domain (unjoin the domain on master saves some time), and re-activate windows and office. I normally do if backward too rather than remove disk from each machine i move my master disk with image on and clone to the machine.

 

How many machines have you got to image?

Edited June 24, 2014 by mikeyd101

[jertsy]

+1 for MDT, that's what I use here tho if i have a number of machines todo i also use clonezilla and just clone the disks from one machine to the next.

 

You have to be a bit careful about the number of single deployments you do concurrently from MDT, I found with our setup here the machine can only manage about 4-6 machines before taking a huge performance penalty (network or disk its a very old machine using as a server).

 

Main process is build your image (starting with the install media / iso), add oobe drivers to MDT (normally only need network, mass storage drivers to get you up and running) install software, do updates, unjoin domain, capture image, create a task schedule from captured image, build Win PE cd/usb and boot machine and deploy image. There are plenty of youtube videos around which explain in more detail.

 

I've tried looking at WDS and Multicast but couldn't get it working.

 

On saying all that MDT/WDS is a lot of work to get you to the point of deploying images. I normally just build first machine and then just clone the hdd for the next computer. Somehow I find it quicker to deploy.

 

Thanks for the information.

[SHimmer45]

+1 for MDT, that's what I use here tho if i have a number of machines todo i also use clonezilla and just clone the disks from one machine to the next.

 

You have to be a bit careful about the number of single deployments you do concurrently from MDT, I found with our setup here the machine can only manage about 4-6 machines before taking a huge performance penalty (network or disk its a very old machine using as a server).

 

with our image of approx 12GB i can roll it out to 30 machines in around 30mins ish which isnt bad (thats with a 1GB backbone and 100mb to the clients)

a decent network connection and ideally 1GB to the client would make it even faster

 

the best videos i found were from a chap called the "deployment artist" on youtube

[mikeyd101]

our images are between 25-35gb depending on machine and campus.

[jertsy]

Thanks for all of the replies guys.

I think I'm going WDS for now, then next summer I can use MDT or even SCCM if I feel its necessary. For now I just want to get a Windows 7 image with office 2013, VLC, Flash etc... Thankfully we don't have too much curriculum software here. What has put me back time wise is our install\support company have had 'time' issues and now we are getting closer VMware has decided to start crashing putting me further back. The original plan was for me to be doing PC images a month ago. So the pressure is on so to speak!

Does anyone have any good beginner guides for WDS? I have been watching some WDS guides on YouTube today.

[MYK-IT]

Highly recommended these books:

Deployment Fundamentals, Vol. 4: Deploying Windows 8 and Office 2013 Using MDT 2012 Update 1: Amazon.co.uk: Johan Arwidmark, Mikael Nystrom: Books

Deployment Fundamentals: Deploying Windows Clients Using Mdt 2010 Lite Touch by: Johan Arwidmark: Amazon.co.uk: Johan Arwidmark: Books

 

Takes you through the whole process.

[jertsy]

Do you have images for each build in WDS i.e. Art, DT, ICT etc... I could imagine this approach could get quite large in terms of file size, Or a base image say with office and GPO deploying software?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Highly recommended these books:

Deployment Fundamentals, Vol. 4: Deploying Windows 8 and Office 2013 Using MDT 2012 Update 1: Amazon.co.uk: Johan Arwidmark, Mikael Nystrom: Books

Deployment Fundamentals: Deploying Windows Clients Using Mdt 2010 Lite Touch by: Johan Arwidmark: Amazon.co.uk: Johan Arwidmark: Books

 

Takes you through the whole process.

 

Thank you

[Norphy]

There are three types of image that you can deploy:

 

A "Thin" image. This consists of just the OS, your custom settings and updates. All other software is deployed during the build. Advantages are that it keeps the image small and you have the flexibility of not having every piece of software that you own installed everywhere you install the image. Disadvantage is that you need a pretty good piece of middleware to reliably deploy your software, either during the build process (e.g. MDT, SCCM) or afterwards (e.g. SCCM, KACE, Altiris). GPOs alone might not be able to cut it, a GPO can officially only deploy an MSI and even then it's not always reliable. Some MSIs can be very awkward to deploy silently.

 

A "Fat" image. This consists of the OS, your settings, updates and every piece of software that you own. Advantages to this approach is that it's probably more reliable, you can set your options once and forget about it. It may be quicker too, for it's a lot quicker to deploy a fat image with Adobe CC and Office in than it is to deploy a thin one and install the software afterwards. You can put anything that's particularly awkward to deploy in there as well. Disadvantage is that the image can grow very quickly and that it's very inflexible. You have to have a site license for every piece of software in that image (or at least enough licenses to cover it anyway) otherwise you're breaking the law and you're deploying the same image everywhere whether a PC needs the software or not. This is the easiest approach and possibly the best to use with plain WDS to begin with at least.

 

A "hybrid" image. This consists of your OS, your settings, updates and some of your software. I use this approach, it offers the best of both worlds. I put anything that's awkward, anything that's big and anything that's literally needed everywhere into the image and use SCCM to deploy the other software depending on whether it's needed or not.

 

One thing, with Vista or above, you don't need to have a separate image for each different piece of hardware that you use. As long as when you sysprep your image you use the /generalize switch, your image is completely hardware agnostic and can be deployed to anything that can run Windows.

[robjduk]

you should be able to make a basic MDT to do what you want in a few days. There is a truck load to it and can spend a lifetime refining it but as a basic tool, shouldn't take long.

[jertsy]

There are three types of image that you can deploy:

 

A "Thin" image. This consists of just the OS, your custom settings and updates. All other software is deployed during the build. Advantages are that it keeps the image small and you have the flexibility of not having every piece of software that you own installed everywhere you install the image. Disadvantage is that you need a pretty good piece of middleware to reliably deploy your software, either during the build process (e.g. MDT, SCCM) or afterwards (e.g. SCCM, KACE, Altiris). GPOs alone might not be able to cut it, a GPO can officially only deploy an MSI and even then it's not always reliable. Some MSIs can be very awkward to deploy silently.

 

A "Fat" image. This consists of the OS, your settings, updates and every piece of software that you own. Advantages to this approach is that it's probably more reliable, you can set your options once and forget about it. It may be quicker too, for it's a lot quicker to deploy a fat image with Adobe CC and Office in than it is to deploy a thin one and install the software afterwards. You can put anything that's particularly awkward to deploy in there as well. Disadvantage is that the image can grow very quickly and that it's very inflexible. You have to have a site license for every piece of software in that image (or at least enough licenses to cover it anyway) otherwise you're breaking the law and you're deploying the same image everywhere whether a PC needs the software or not. This is the easiest approach and possibly the best to use with plain WDS to begin with at least.

 

A "hybrid" image. This consists of your OS, your settings, updates and some of your software. I use this approach, it offers the best of both worlds. I put anything that's awkward, anything that's big and anything that's literally needed everywhere into the image and use SCCM to deploy the other software depending on whether it's needed or not.

 

One thing, with Vista or above, you don't need to have a separate image for each different piece of hardware that you use. As long as when you sysprep your image you use the /generalize switch, your image is completely hardware agnostic and can be deployed to anything that can run Windows.

 

Thanks for the detailed explanation, that really helps.

[jertsy]

you should be able to make a basic MDT to do what you want in a few days. There is a truck load to it and can spend a lifetime refining it but as a basic tool, shouldn't take long.

 

My support company have most experience with WDS, so if I go the MDT route I have no quick support as such, and with 3 and a half weeks left I'm kind of up against it. I could go WDS now, MDT next year and maybe SCCM the year after. I will look at some MDT guides tomorrow.

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply robjduk.

[TG_MI]

The sooner you dig into MDT the better. I understand that you're in a time crunch, so do what you have to do, but once you understand the basics of MDT, you'll find that your life has gotten a lot easier. WDS just really augments the deployment options you have via the "work" you put into MDT.

 

I prefer the "thin" image approach nowadays. I used to do a hybrid approach, but I've found that creating, capturing and deploying custom .wim's is time consuming and can lead to inconsistent deployments over time. With the "thin" approach, I simply deploy the unmodified Win7SP1 x64 Enterprise .wim and put all of my "work" into the applications node of MDT. If you can figure out the silent install command to each of the applications you intend to have be part of your standard deployment, then you're 80% of the way there. The rest of the "work" is figuring out how to adjust defaults per application during install (using Orca to generate MSTs mostly) and then using batch files, scripts etc to do cleanup, place shortcuts etc.

 

Once you've put the work in to figure out how to smoothly deploy an application (Java Runtime Environment, MS Office, Adobe Flash, VLC Media Player and so on...) you won't have to put much thought into keeping your deployments current because the method to install say, Adobe Flash for IE version 13 is usually exactly how you'll do version 14... Get a list of apps working in MDT then create an "App Bundle" to deploy them all with one checkbox during Lite Touch.

 

Yes, there's a learning curve, but the payoff is huge.

 

Just my two cents.

[themightymrp]

I agree with @TG_MI that the payoff of learning MDT is huge so when you do get a chance - do it!

 

I would do the "thin" image approach too if I had time. Currently I use the "hybrid" approach. If I wanted to slap an image on say, 4 machines at once, doing the thin option would take far too long having to wait for each application to install. I use an image loaded with the essential software for every room which deploys out much quicker, then use GPO's to install relevant additional programs depending on where the machine will be used i.e. stick 2 in the maths department and 2 in English. Overall this is quicker for me.

 

When trying to silently install software, a great resource is ITninja.com (formly appdeploy.com) a site dedicated to discovering silent install methods.

 

Also worth noting that MDT has built in features for customising MS Office installs too which makes life easier

[MYK-IT]

Using the 2 books I previously recommended, we have an image that has windows & (customised) MS Office as part of the standard image with applications like, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Air, Shockwave, Java, VLC installed before completion. These applications can then be easily kept up-to-date when new versions are released so you don't have to keep updating the base image. And Windows updates are also applied too via your WSUS server for example.

 

Then you can either install additional applications manually, or via GPO deployment/MSI once you have got to grips and learnt this as @TG_MI previously mentioned.

Edited June 25, 2014 by MYK-IT