Vista - Vista Deployment

A couple a days ago I was assigned a vitsa deployment project which will take
place next week, I will basically be deploying about 150 computers in a
school to brand new Dell workstations….Great! except that up until two days
ago I haven’t looked at the vista deployments - or Vista all together for
that matter, I expected to see good old RIS, RISSETUP and sysprep in
Deploy.cab………….boy did it change!! So in a panic I quickly grabbed a few
white papers and webcasts, And boy did I have to dump a lot of info in my
head within two days (Wim files, imagex, WinPE, WAIK, BDD, WDS), did a lot of
reading, watching and playing around, I now need to bring all the pieces
together. I would greatly appreciate anyone’s professional input and answer a
few (or a lot) of my questions.

Objection:
The organization is getting brand new computers from dell, all preloaded
with vista, I need to configure all machines to the domain, load up about 8
graphic application (illustrator. Photoshop, etc) and office, setup printers,
configure a default profile. They requested that I blow all this down with an
image from the network – using PXE booting and to fully automate the process,
I do not need to preserve the user data.

Setup Technican machine:
Load up all utilities…BDD, WAIK etc.

Setup Master machine:
I will take one machine, boot up vista (using the dell preloaded install not
a clean install), install all my applications, install all the printers,
sysprep /generalize /shutdown.

Capture image:
Now I need to capture the image of that master machine (I guess what they
call, thick image), Im still not clear what the proper way of capturing an
image is, I actually successfully created a WinPE boot cd with ImageX on it
(using copype and oscdimg), but I realized that there must be a more proper
automated way to do this. I know that in BDD when running the new “Deployment
Points� wizard, there is a setting “Ask if an image should be captured�,
actually whats the point of this setting? If im about to deploy an image to
the final destination, why would I want to capture an image? Unless perhaps
this is the proper method of capturing an image? Is it? in any case I capture
(assuming I know how to do this) and name it Joesimg.wim

Setup Image for deployment/create OS:
Once I have the Wim file of my new thick image, I will bring up BDD (the
most powerful tool I have seen for quite some time). First ill create a new
OS from the install.wim using the vista DVD (so that it creates the catalog
file), Next I create another OS with my custom image Joesimg.wim.

New Appliction/package/OOBD:
There is obviously no point in creating a new application since it’s a thick
image with all the apps, the same assume applies for OS packages and OOBD. Is
it possible to add a new application without lots of scripting so that the
install is fully automated?

New Build:
Next I create a new build and select my custom image here is where im a bit
confused.
1)is the product key I supply during the build creation the only place I
have to enter it in order for the product key screen not to show up?
2)I need this to be as much automated as possible, what do I need to put in
the in the Unattend.xml file in order to fully automate this without a single
prompt?, I guess the Time Zone, join the domain, computer name, Regional
setting, local admin pass, AcceptEula, disk configuration, anything else? Is
there a BDD wizard to put in all these settings or do I need to manually Edit
the Unattend.xml file?
3)is it possible for the for the computer name to follow some sort of naming
convention by using a variable?, for example I’d like to name them something
like PC1-PC2 etc.
4)the dell machine comes with a 2GB recovery partition, do I need to
preserve this partition? If not then how do I configure that it puts in a
clean install? I know there is the ZTIDiskpart.txt script but im not sure how
to use it, is ZTIDiskpart.txt the only method to wipe the partition or is it
a setting in Unattend.xml? what will it do if I don’t configure the
ZTIDiskpart.txt script, will it just install on top of the current OS? Or
perhaps will BDD configure the Unattend.xml based on what it sees in the
custom image? Keep in mind I do not need to preserve data.
5)in the Task Sequence area there is a “capture image� section, whats the
purpose of this?

Deployment Points:
Next I’ll create a new deployment point (I will keep unchecked all the “ASK�
options so that its automated), and update. Just to verify, the option to
“Generate a Lite Touch bootable RAM disk ISO� is only needed If I plan to
boot from CD/DVD not if im PXE booting?

RIS/WDS:
I have my WDS server all setup and configured, I open WDS native and add the
LiteTouchPE_x86.wim boot file. Just to verify, I do not need to add any
images to WDS because the WInPE boot file generated with BDD is configured to
automaticly pull the image from the Distribution share? Also will BDD add the
credentials to the Distribution share so I don’t have to enter it manually?

A few more questions:
1) When I capture the image, does it save all drivers, printers, updates,
applications? Im asking because im used to ghost and I know this is not a
sector-by-sector based image.
2) Does BDD automatically create the winscript.ini file?
3) how do I add a NIC driver to a Windows PE image?
4) do I need to manually copy Unattend.xml from
\Distribution\Control\WINDOWSVISTA to \RemoteInstall\WdsClientUnattend?

That’s it for now, im sorry for the lengthy post but I need to get this
perfect and I only have one more day

Thanks tons!

Didn't read all your post, but it sounds like you will use images since you
have a lot of applications already installed (can be done with msi package
etc but too much job for your time frame)

Why not use ImageX to do the job for you? here is a simple tutorial you can
work from:
http://john.bryntze.net/jbkb/index.p...mageX_tutorial


"JoeOst" wrote: