Windows 7 : Zero Touch Installations - Monitoring Deployment Progress

It would be a very easy trap to think of zero touch installation as a fire-and-forget process. When you deploy an operating system to many critical business tools (end-user computers) at once, then you need to know exactly what is happening.

Configuration Manager has a rich set of reports (Reporting Point) that you can call upon to track the progress of any deployment. The Reporting Point can be accessed using your web browser at a URL that is based on the three-letter site code that you assigned when installing the ConfigMgr site server. For example, opening up http://dep1oysrv.dep1oy.com/SMSReporting_DPL (or http://1oca1host/SMSReporting_DPL when logged into the ConfigMgr server) will open up the window shown in Figure 1. The left pane contains report categories and individual reports that you can create. The Status summary of a specific task sequence advertisement report, found under Task Sequences - Advertisement Status, will allow you to monitor progress of a deployment. You can click the Values button on the right to select one of the advertisements and then click Display to open the report.

Figure 1. Configuration Manager reports

The report will open and give a summary of the status for the advertisement (Figure 2). Some clients might have no status, some might be running, some might be complete. The numbers of each status will be illustrated. The little arrow button on the left allows you to drill down. You can click on this to expand the report to see every computer with that status.

From there you can drill down into the detail of an individual computer (Figure 3). Normally you don't need to do this, but it will be useful for troubleshooting any deployments that fail or seem to be stuck at a specific point. An incredible amount of detail is available at this level to assist with identifying the cause of an issue.

Figure 2. Status summary of the advertisement

Figure 3. Detailed machine progress

The status summary report will allow you to keep an eye on the deployment as time passes. You can then drill down into any computer that reports a problem, identify the cause, and remedy it. That will be a rare occasion if the process is well tested and planned.

Enabling Multicast ConfigMgr is capable of deploying a large operating system image to thousands of clients at once over the network. The bottleneck is the network. Enabling multicast allows many more clients to be targeted at once. The distribution point must be installed on Windows Server 2008 or later. The WDS role must be enabled before multicast is enabled on the distribution point. IIS with ISAPI extensions and IIS 6 management compatibility must also be installed. The network and Windows firewalls must allow multicast UDP ports. ConfigMgr clients must be able to download content from the distribution point using BITS, HTTP, and HTTPS. Both Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 (or later) and Configuration Manager 2007 R2 (or later) must be installed. Each of the following must be configured to use multicast: The distribution point The operating system image package The advertisement You can learn more about enabling and using multicast in ConfigMgr at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc161973.aspx.

Now you have the ultimate ability to deploy an operating system to many computers at once without leaving your desk and at a time that causes the least disruption to your end users. You can monitor the progress of the deployment using your reports. Imagine how impressed your boss will be when that Windows 7 deployment project ends early, with little disruption, and you hand over a ConfigMgr report to prove it.