[wds] WDS + MDT

[garethEds]

Evening peeps

 

Just want to check the following. If I re-build our WDS server to Windows 2008R2 and install the most recent version of WDS, can I then install MDT alongside?

 

I want to use WDS for deploying our Windows XP .wim image and then MDT in the future when we move over to Windows 7. From what I read MDT does not support dynamic driver provisioning on Windows XP so I am sticking to the image.

 

However my current WDS server is about to collapse.

 

Gareth

[plexer]

We use mdt and wds for xp.

 

Ben

[mhundley]

Do you need to use an XP Wim?

 

We use MDT to deploy XP as a replacement for RIS, the process is roughly the same, you PXE boot to get to the WinPE, select a task and then insert a computer name, the process is then automated just like a RIS build used to be.

 

The way we have it configured at the moment the build places the computer into the Computers container in AD, we could get it to build into any OU we want but this could interfere with the task sequence. When the build has completed the computer can be moved into the correct OU and any software will deploy as normal via GPO.

 

Using this method the task sequence will insert the relevant drivers at build time, we can also install important pre-requisites and .exe software such as .net at build time.

 

Some hardware requires specific drivers for the chipset/sata, using the advanced section in MDT you can create a selection profile which can be used in a custom task sequence to force only the drivers you know work onto the hardware, this is much easier than editing the .sif files you had in RIS.

 

I have written a Powershell script to set up our environment, this takes pre-configured task sequence files and deploymentshare rules which we know work to provide a uniform configuration. If there is any interest I will make this available once I have stripped out any sensitive info.

[SYNACK]

Yes you can run both in parallel, MDT is a seporate platform and just makes a nice bootable WIM that you can add as an option to WDS boot. You can keep both running in parallel without any problems at all. My WDS servers have both MDT and generic winpe options and at some point I want to get around to adding WinRE to that list as well which is great for quick repairs.

[garethEds]

Just a quick post to close my initial question - we're all sorted here now with WDS and MDT2010 Update 1 running on a shiny 2008R2 server. It all works brilliant.

 

Gareth