MDT Recovering name from the domain

[mattfarnell]

Does anyone have a guide or steps on setting up recovering from the domain? I've tried various different methods with no success.

I've managed to get it to join the domain but not keep it's name. I'm also still getting the name prompt as well which is confusing

[jthompson]

Do you have a database in your MDT setup? Our machines keep the same hostname for life, so we have computer records in the db storing hostnames and serial numbers of computers.

[mattfarnell]

I don't think we do. I did just the basic install of MDT. What you are talking about is exactly what i'm looking for

[jthompson]

I'll see what I can dig out from my notes from the time. Hopefully I've noted down whatever blog posts I followed. Quite easy to setup iirc.

When a machine gets reimaged, MDT uses the machine's serial number to fetch the hostname from the db, then joins it to the domain. It ends up as the same AD object as before so things like its description and BitLocker keys are preserved.

[mattfarnell]

Brill, Thanks.

[jthompson]

This is the blog post I followed for installing SQL Server Express on the server and creating a database in MDT. If you have multiple deployment shares, they all work with the same database: it's not one db per deployment share.

https://4sysops.com/archives/windows-8-deployment-part-8-the-mdt-database/

As in the post, when going through the MDT database creation wizard, I just ticked the computer-specific settings option and left everything else unticked. The records in my db only include computers and I'm only storing serial numbers and corresponding OSDComputerName values.

 

I also use this PowerShell script to bulk import records from CSV. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-blog-archive/manipulating-the-microsoft-deployment-toolkit-database-using-powershell/706876

 

I wanted TLS between clients and the database, too. However, I found that I needed to be using the Windows 11 22H2 ADK (10.1.2200.1) in order to TLS connections from clients to be able to work when TLA 1.0 and 1.1 are disabled on the server. Earlier ADKs only use TLS 1.0 I believe.

 

Hope that all helps

[jthompson]

Just to expand on the PowerShell importing bit, after downloading the MDTDB.psm1 module, I actually use this script (stored in the same location) to import from a CSV. Here I'm importing serial numbers, so if you're using MAC address or some other identifier, you'd need to modify the code accordingly.

 

[CmdletBinding()]
param(
   [Parameter(Mandatory)]
   [string] $InputFile
)

# Import the MDTDB module.
Import-Module .\MDTDB.psm1
# Connect to MDT database.
Connect-MDTDatabase -sqlserver YOURSERVERNAME -instance SQLEXPRESS -database MDT
# Load CSV file. Fields will need to be 'Name' and 'Serial'.
$Computers = Import-CSV $InputFile
$Computers | ForEach-Object {New-MDTComputer -description $_.Name -serialNumber $_.Serial -settings @{OSInstall='YES'; OSDComputerName=$_.Name}}

Edited November 7, 2024 by jthompson

[mattfarnell]

Excellent, Thank you for your help. I'll sit and have a session on it now.

[mattfarnell]

I posted this on a couple of forums and someone else came back with this video on YT.

Might automate yours a bit more

[jthompson]

Ta. Currently working on getting MS Config Manager going, so that I can then move on from using MDT. As much as I do like MDT, I'm not confident that Win 11 vNext will.

[mattfarnell]

We're actually moving the opposite way. Just dropping config manager because it's too complex and we don't use 99% of it. MDT does just what we need. im hoping that they'll re consider the windows 11 support for it (it does work) but not officially.