MDT & Joining Domain

[ITGURU]

I'm currently playing around with MDT with the possibility of using to Deploy windows 11. For win10 I create a fat image and then use 3rd party software to deploy the image to PCs in 7 minutes with all required software, name and network the machine of which when join to the domain it finds the existing computer account and then at reboot assigns any GPOs etc.

 

With MDT, can it use the existing account? WHen setting it up I had to specify an OU but guessing you have to delete the existing account before you can image and name the machine the same as it was before?

 

Correct me if i'm wrong but can i setup MDT/WDS to use the same PC account when re-imaging a machine so it's already in the right OU without moving it afterwards?

 

thanks.

[snagrat]

Yes you can. If you enter the PC name during the build it will just use the same name in AD, regardless of what OU it is in.

 

I used to pre populate AD with the computer names so I knew MDT would out it where I want without me having to go back to AD afterwards.

 

Note that MDT will not move the machine to a different OU if the machine exists already - unless things have changed in the past few years

[ITGURU]

Yes you can. If you enter the PC name during the build it will just use the same name in AD, regardless of what OU it is in.

 

I used to pre populate AD with the computer names so I knew MDT would out it where I want without me having to go back to AD afterwards.

 

Note that MDT will not move the machine to a different OU if the machine exists already - unless things have changed in the past few years

ah thank you! I've just setup first deployment tool to install Windows 11 and a success but selected to join to workgroup.

 

will now create a base image, capture and redeploy and test joining to domain with existing name.

[Davit2005]

Create a different OU and create a dedicated Service account with the delegated permissions (not domain admin) to deploy the newly built PCs into that OU. You can use MDT to install the software before you deploy. I did thhis before in a previous employment, deployed a VM, installed the software, captured the image and then deployed. This made re-imaging a PC a 30min job and we used to do PC labs with 30 PCs in half an hour. The deployment literally asked for the PC name once the correct credentials and image was selected then done it's thing.