3. Advertise for Bare-Metal Installation
As discussed previously, in a secure environment you
can advertise the task sequence to a collection where the members are
joined by computer association. This approach allows you to support many
task sequences and many collections. This strategy requires more work
to gather hardware information for new PCs, but it does allow a
specialized PC to be quickly built.
Alternatively, if unknown computer support is enabled
in the PXE service point, you can advertise a single task sequence to
the All Unknown Computers collection. More traditional software
distribution techniques can be used to install software once the
computer is built. This approach requires no effort to gather
information about new PCs but it does require more time to install
software to specialize the PC beyond the single supported reference
image.
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Many organizations are turning to self-service
software provisioning in the form of App-V, which is a part of the
Microsoft Deployment Optimization Pack (MDOP). MDOP is an additional
purchase that is available to Software Assurance customers. It allows
applications to be sequenced into a virtualized package. Users can
request an application, an optional approval process can be implemented
to control license consumption, and the application is streamed to the
user. App-V features integration with Configuration Manager.
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A PC can now be built using PXE. This approach is
suitable either for new machines or for machines where the operating
system is broken beyond repair. A small amount of manual work is
required to boot up the machine and enter the optional PXE service point
password. Now it's time to move on to the fun part: zero touch
installation.
4. Performing the Zero Touch Installation
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Wake On LAN (WOL) is an Ethernet standard that allows
a computer to be turned on or powered up over the network. This means
you can schedule an advertisement for a time when some PCs might be
powered down and ConfigMgr will wake them up to complete the work. You
can learn more about WOL functionality in ConfigMgr at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb693668.aspx.
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The process of deploying the Windows 7 reference
image to an existing PC (whether it is XP, Vista, or Windows 7) is
almost identical to the process of deploying it via PXE. An
advertisement is created and associated with a collection. The only
difference might be how the advertisement is scheduled. Normally, an
advertisement that is used with existing computers will be scheduled to
run at some point in the future.
You will advertise the deployment task sequence to
the previously created Head Office Windows 7 Capable Systems collection.
Start the New Advertisement Wizard for the task sequence (Figure 7).
The collection that you wish to deploy Windows 7 to is selected. You
will probably still want to select the option to allow the task sequence
to be run from PXE and boot media. You never know what the future may
hold. You might need to manually rebuild some computers at a later time
if the operating system becomes unstable.
The Schedule screen (Figure 8)
allows you to control exactly when an OSD will happen. Advertisement
start time is when computers within the targeted collection will be able
to start seeing the new task. A ConfigMgr client will become aware of
the advertisement when it next refreshes its policy after this time.
Advertisement Expires allows you to specify when
computers will start to consider the advertisement to be not applicable
anymore. You can think of it as like a use-by date on a carton of milk.
Mandatory assignments dictate when ConfigMgr clients
will be forced to run the task sequence. They will have no option unless
the date and time in the Advertisement Expires setting have been
reached or passed.
You might want to use the As Soon As Possible option for your mandatory assignment if working in a lab.
The Program Rerun behavior is important to note. The
default is Never Rerun Advertised Program. That means that once the
program runs (even if it fails) on a computer, it will never run again. A
new advertisement would be required to get the program to run on that
computer again. You might want to consider the Always Rerun Program
setting. This option allows help desk or possibly even end users to
rebuild the PC via PXE using the advertisement if it breaks beyond
repair.
You can move through the rest of the wizard and
accept the default options unless otherwise directed by any deployment
policies in your organization.
In the real world you will now sit back and relax.
Nothing will usually happen for quite some time. In a lab, you will want
to see things happen straight away.
You can force a ConfigMgr client to immediately look for new advertisements. To do this:
Start the Configuration Manager item.
Select Machine Policy Retrieval & Evaluation Cycle.
The ConfigMgr client will now communicate with the
ConfigMgr site server via the management point. Here it will learn of
the new advertisement assuming that the advertisement start date and
time has been reached. One of two things will now happen:
If the mandatory assignment date and time has been reached:
A warning will appear in the system notification area. It will let the
user know that an advertised program will shortly start running. The
user can force it to run straight away.
If the mandatory assignment date and time has not been reached:
A warning will appear in the system notification area. It will let the
user know that an advertised program is available. The user can start
Run Advertised Programs in the Control Panel to see if/when it will be
forced to run. The user can also force the advertised program to run now
if they choose.
The task sequence will run on the computer when the
user starts the advertised program or when the mandatory date and time
has been reached. If the PC is powered off at the time of the mandatory
assignment, then it will run the advertised program when it powers up.
But it will only do that if the assignment has not expired.
By default, a progress bar
will appear to warn let the user know what is happening. After a while,
the machine will complete its last reboot in the process and be waiting
at the login prompt for the user to log in. Everything in the task
sequence should be complete.
