Windows 7 : Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 - Creating and Populating a Deployment Share (part 1)

11/15/2013 3:17:08 AM

The deployment share (DS) is the shared folder your MDT clients (target machines) will connect to and download images from. The deployment share can reside on the deployment server or across the network on another server. In fact, you could store everything needed to deploy an image to a target machine on a single DVD or even a USB stick (depending on the size of your image). This type of deployment is referred to as a media deployment. The cool thing about a media deployment is that you can deploy an image with no network connectivity at all . In this section, we'll show you how to create a deployment share using the default settings. Don't worry too much about using the default settings when you create a deployment share; there are plenty of places later where you can override any default setting.

1. Creating a Deployment Share

You will almost certainly need two deployment shares. The first one (the lab share) is where you create reference images and the other one (the production share) is where you create real deployment shares. Although you could combine both of these onto a single share, in most cases it is easier to have two separate deployment shares. The lab deployment share would only contain the operating system, packages, and applications that are supposed to be in the reference image. The production deployment share would contain the captured reference image, applications that are not inside the reference image, drivers, and in some cases, packages and patches. One other reason to use two shares is that there is normally a big difference in the way you customize the settings; the settings for creating reference images are not the same as for creating production deployment. Now, let's create a deployment share that handles both reference images and production deployment.

When you have done this and you get a better understanding of how MDT works and what you can do, you should create a separate deployment share. Just repeat the steps and use another name and folder, such as MDTPrd (short for MDT Production). When you've finished, you can copy the sequences, the captured operating systems, applications, and drivers using copy and paste between these two deployment shares. Now you have a clean one for production and one that will be a bit "not so clean" where you can play around and test. The following steps will guide you through the process of creating a Deployment Share:

Create a deployment share from within the Deployment Workbench by right-clicking the Deployment Shares node and choosing New Deployment Share. This launches the New Deployment Share Wizard's Path page, shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The Path page
Choose the drive and folder where you would like your deployment share created. You can either browse to a folder or simply type over the existing path. No need to create the folder first—MDT will do that for you. Then click Next.

The next page of the New Deployment Share Wizard is the Share page shown in Figure 2. Type the name you would like to share the folder as in the Share Name field and click Next.

Hiding Shares

Putting a $ at the end of the share name makes this a hidden share. So when users browse the shared folders on the deployment server, they won't see this folder. For those users who like to poke around network shares just to see what's out there, this shared folder will not be easily found.

Figure 2. Entering a name on the Share page

The Descriptive Name page shown in Figure 3 allows you to give your shared folder a description, which appears with the shared folder name when you view the shared folders for that server. To quickly view the shared folders of a server, open a command prompt and type the following:
```
net share
```
The results are shown in Table 1. Once you've chosen your description, click Next.
Table 1. Shared folders information
Share name Resource Default descriptive name
C$ C:\ Default share
MDTLab$ F:\MDTLab MDT Lab share
F$ F:\ Default share
IPC$ Remote IPC
ADMIN$ C:\Windows RemoteAdmin

Figure 3. The Descriptive Name page
The Allow Image Capture page shown in Figure 4 by default is configured to ask if an image of the target machine should be captured. Capturing is used when you want to create a reference image, and since this deployment share is going to be able to handle both reference images and deployment images we need to be able to capture an image. If you later create a new deployment share for production only, you should answer that question with a no instead.
You should only use the capture feature when the purpose is to create a reference image and not for backup (if you need a backup when doing a refresh, replace, or upgrade, the deployment wizard will ask you when deploying the new OS). Accept the default setting or remove the check mark and click Next.
The next page is the Allow Admin Password page shown in Figure 5. The default is to not ask users to set the local administrator password. Okay, wait a minute—in what corporate environment do you let users set the local administrator password? None that we've ever worked in. We think what they mean is the technician who is performing the installation would be able to set the local admin password (when prompted). But in most environments this is a predetermined password that can be set in an unattended answer file so there would be no need to prompt for the admin password during deployment. One reason you might use this setting is if you have branch offices with a local IT staff that requires different admin passwords on their workstations. Barring that, leave it unchecked. When you've finished with this page, click Next.

Figure 4. The Allow Image Capture page

Figure 5. The Allow Admin Password page
The Allow Product Key page shown in Figure 6 allows you to prompt during installation for a product key. If you're an Enterprise customer, there's no need to worry about product keys; only non-Enterprise clients need to enter a product key. Choose the option that is correct for you, and then click Next to go to the Summary page.

Figure 6. The Allow Product Key page
The Summary page shown in Figure 7 displays the choices you have made in the New Deployment Share Wizard. If you would like to make changes, click the Previous button until you are on the page you'd like to change. Click Next on this page to kick off the creation of the deployment share, which is displayed on the Progress page (this is pretty quick). Then the Confirmation page appears, as shown in Figure 8.
There are three buttons on the Confirmation page, two of which are new with MDT 2010. The View Script button reveals the PowerShell commands that were run to create the deployment share. The PowerShell commands to create a deployment share look like this:
```
Add-PSSnapIn Microsoft.BDD.PSSnapIn
new-PSDrive -Name "DS001" -PSProvider "MDTProvider" -Root
"F:\MDTLab" -Description "MDT Lab share"
-NetworkPath "\\Dep1oySrv\MDTLab$" -Verbose
 | add-MDTPersistentDrive -Verbose
```

When building your own scripts, you can copy from this page (on any MDT wizard) and paste into a Notepad text file to combine commands.

Figure 7. The Summary page

Figure 8. The Confirmation page

The Save Output button will dump everything you see on the Confirmation page into a text file. Click the Finish button to complete the New Deployment Share Wizard.