How to install and configure Windows Deployment Services on Windows Server 2008 1.

In Server Manager, go to Roles and click on Add Roles.

2.

In the Add Roles Wizard that appears, place a check in the checkbox for Windows Deployment Services and click Next.

3. The next page of the wizard displays introductory information and notes regarding installing and configuring Windows Deployment Services. Once you have read

through the information, click Next to continue.

4. The next page of the wizard displays the services that will be installed. Since this is your first Windows Deployment Server, both the Deployment Server and Transport Server roles must be included (the Deployment Server requires the Transport

Server). Click Next.

5. The wizard displays a summary page requesting your confirmation. Click Install to confirm or < Previous to go back and make any necessary changes.

6. The Installation Progress page does not display much useful information as Windows installs Windows Deployment Services. In creating this documentation, I found the progress bar at about 15% for a minute or two, jumped to where you see it in the graphic below for about a minute or two, and then moved on the

Installation Results page.

7. After the installation completed, the wizard displayed the Installation Results page. In total, the installation my system took approximately 2-3 minutes. Your results

may vary depending on server load and capability. Click Close to close the wizard.

8. Return to Server Manager you should now see Windows Deployment Services listed under the installed Roles.

9. As you can see, the Windows Deployment Services role provides a view of service status and events related Windows Deployment Services, a link to the command lne utility, WDSUtil.exe that you will now need to use to configure WDS, and links to

resources and support for using WDS.

10. Before the Windows Deployment Services Server can start, you need to define where the WDS Image Repository is. This can be using the WDSUtil.exe command line tool wdsutil /initialize-server /reminst:v:\WDSImages the Windows Deployment Server Service should start automatically; if it doesnt, start it manually and remember to configure it to start automatically on a reboot. 11. Once the service is running you should be able to access the Server components and configure the Windows Deployment Service to answer PXE boot requests and deploy your images. Expand the Windows Deployment Services, Servers, and

your server name to see the list of sections available as illustrated below.

12. Define a boot image. The default Windows Server 2008 boot image boot.wim can be used here. You can add the image from the Server 2008 DVD, found in the sources folder on the DVD. (You can also use the one provided on the Vista CD, however that does not contain all the options available on the Server 2008 version). Right click on the Boot Images section and select Add Boot Image. The Windows Deployment Services Add Image Wizard should appear as illustrated below. Type the path to the boot.wim or use the Browse button to locate it. Then click

Next.

13. The next page of the wizard asks for a name for the image and the image description. If you use the Server 2008 boot.wim, the values default to Microsoft Windows Longhorn Setup (x86) in both text boxes. You can change these to whatever you prefer. For this example, we are leaving them as is. Click Next to

continue.

14. The next page of the wizard summarizes your previous selections as illustrated below. Click Next to begin adding the selected image.

15. As the wizard runs, you should see the progress bar move. Depending on the size of the boot.wim and where you are loading it from, it should take anywhere from a

few seconds to a few minutes to complete.

16. Upon completion, the wizard should indicate success and the Finish button should now be available. Click Finish to close the wizard. Once completed, you may wish to repeat steps 12 through 16 to load boot images for other architectures (x64,

ia64).

17. Now returned to Server Manager and the Windows Deployment Services role, you should be able to click on the Boot Images item under your server and see the

image listed in the middle pane.

18. Once the boot image has been assigned, right click on the Server name in this example, we right click on the name of the server circled in red below and

select Properties.

19. Following with our example, a window titled SOL Properties appears. Change to the PXE Response Settings tab and change the PXE Response Policy to either Respond only to known client computers or Respond to all (known and unknown) client computers. You should generally select Respond only to known client computers this option requires that you pre-configure Active Directory or use WDSUtil.exe to appropriately define by MAC address which computers WDS should permit to PXE boot. (Unless you expect to closely monitor the boot process of the clients, appropriately switching the boot order after the first PXE boot, you should use the Respond only to known client computers). Details on how to pre-configure clients will follow later and can also be referenced by clicking the link on the bottom of

this tab.

20. On the Directory Services tab, configure a format for the computer naming policy. More information on creating this can be found in the help from clicking on the link to More information about specifying the computer naming policy in the New client naming policy area.

Then select a Client account location.

21. Change to the Boot tab. The settings here are optional, however, if you are not going to create a customized boot image or use more than one, you can configure

the default image here.

22. For this document, we have only installed the x86 boot.wim and we will only assign a default boot image to the x86 architecture. Click the Select button next to the line for x86 architecture under the Default boot image (optional) section. A new window should appear listing all installed boot images (this is why we installed the boot images first). Select the image you want to use as the default and

click the OK button.

23. Once selected, the Boot tab now displays the default boot image(s) assigned to each architecture.

24. Click on the DHCP tab. Read this CAREFULLY. You are using a NONMicrosoft DHCP server, you must check the second option, Configure DHCP option 60 to PXEClient. If Microsoft DHCP is used AND it is running from the WDS server, you must check both boxes for Do not listen on port 67 and Configure DHCP option 60 to PXEClient. Otherwise, leave these settings

unchecked.

25. Click on the Network Settings tab. In most cases, the settings here can be left as they are. The one setting you may wish to change is the Network Profile. Depending on the network infrastructure, you may want to set this to 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps. Once set and/or verified, click the OK button to apply your settings and

close the properties window.

26. The client tab features settings for permitting unattended installations through customized configuration files. This is not needed for basic deployment and is not described here. It may be added at a future date as the automating process differs between XP and Vista and is quite extensive in capability with many options for automating setup. 27. Create your OS image using the Windows Automated Installation Kit (also known as WAIK or Windows AIK). This involves installing a reference computer with the software, patches, and configuration settings you want, running sysprep to appropriate prepare it for use in a deployment scenario, and then creating an install image using a Windows PE boot CD and the ImageX tool. This process will be detailed later. As this tutorial continues, well use an XP Pro image with Service Pack 3 and most patches installed as our image to deploy to a Virtual Machine running on Hyper-V and also on another Virtual Machine running on Virtual PC 2007. But before this can be done, the image must be loaded into the Windows Deployment Server. 28. To load the image into Windows Deployment Server, right click on the Install Images section (right above the Boot Images section we used before) and select Add Install Image. The Windows Deployment Services Add Image Wizard should appear. If you have an existing image group, you can select a group to place the image in there or you can create a new group. As we have no pre-existing

group, we create a new one and use the name Workstations for now. Then click Next.

29. On the next page of the wizard type the path to where you stored your install image or use the Browse button to locate it. Once entered, click the Next button.

30. The next page of the wizard displays all the images available in the selected .wim file. If the .wim file contains multiple images and you do not want to use/make all of them available, uncheck the ones you do not want. You can uncheck the box to Use default name and description for each of the selected image and in so doing you will be provided the ability to alter them on the next page of the wizard. In this tutorial, we will NOT do this so the next page of the wizard will NOT offer the ability to change the Name and Description. Once done, click the Next button to

continue.

31. The next page of the wizard displays the summary of your selections and what will be done. Click Next to begin loading the image into WDS.

32. The progress bar moves as the image is loaded. Depending on the size, location, and number of images you are loading it should take anywhere from a few seconds

to a few minutes to complete.

33. Upon completion, the wizard should indicate success and the Finish button should now be available. Click Finish to close the wizard.

34. Now returned to Server Manager and the Windows Deployment Services role, you should see a sub group under Install Images with the title Workstations (as we created in the first step of the wizard) and if you click on Workstations, you should

see the image we just loaded listed in the middle pane.

35. Congratulations! Your WDS server should be prepared and enabled to deliver a fresh XP installation to a computer in need of one! Simply boot the client system with PXE as the first boot item and follow the onscreen instructions. Tip: Remember your architectures! If you plan on installing older operating systems such as XP and Server 2003 with this, make sure you make an image from a multi-processor based system. Otherwise, when you boot, the Windows Deployment Services system may not show any operating systems available for your client system if, for example, the client system has two processors (including hyper-threading and multi-core) and the image was built off a single processor system.