2. Populating the Deployment Share
After you have created a deployment share, it will appear in the Deployment Workbench, as shown in Figure 9.
Under your deployment share you'll see six nodes: Applications,
Operating Systems, Out-of-Box Drivers, Packages, Task Sequences, and
Advanced Configuration. In this section we'll discuss each of these
nodes .
Upon creation of the deployment share, a new folder is created and shared. You can see this in Windows Explorer. Figure 10
shows the folder and its subfolders. Most of these folders will be
empty until you import operating systems, applications, drivers, and
packages (patches) and create task sequences. We'll peek into those
folders momentarily.
A deployment share is like a repository of
components; you fill it with parts that you need during deployment or
when you need to create a reference image. You'll need to import each
component into the Deployment Workbench so that they can be used. First
let's look at the components you can add to the repository; they
include operating systems you'd like to deploy, applications, drivers,
and packages (patches and language packs). For example, you could
import Windows 7, Windows XP SP3, and Windows Server 2008 into the
Operating Systems node. Then you could import Microsoft Office 2010,
Adobe Reader, QuickBooks Pro, and a slew of other applications into the
Applications node. Finally, you could import the drivers and patches
for all operating systems (except for XP and Windows Server 2003,
including R2—they do not support imported patches or language packs in
the Packages node).
Now comes the fun part—you can bind these different
components together. That is where task sequences come into play. A
task sequence controls exactly what happens during the deployment and
the order in which it occurs .
A standard task sequence will contain at least one OS and possibly
applications, drivers, and patches. You could create a task sequence to
deploy Windows 7, Office 2010, Adobe Reader, and all drivers and
patches related to Windows 7. Or a task sequence could deploy Windows
7, Office 2007, and QuickBooks along with all the drivers and patches
related to Windows 7. The point is, for a standard task sequence you
only need one operating system (from the ones you have imported into
MDT), any applications you choose, and drivers and patches for a fully
functional deployment process. And here is the cool part: you can
create as many task sequences as you choose, using the same components
but in different groupings. To import the components, we'll begin with
an operating system; then we'll cover applications, drivers, and
patches.
2.1. Importing Operating Systems
Importing operating systems into MDT is a
wizard-driven process. The supported OSs that can be imported are
Windows XP SP3 and later. You can import three types of images: a full
set of source files, a custom image (WIM files you have created), and
Windows Deployment Service (WDS) images. The first operating system we
are going to import is a full set of source files. To import your first
OS, follow these steps:
Right-click the Operating Systems node and choose New Folder; name the folder Windows 7 (that way, it will be more organized if you start adding other OSs later on).
Open the Operating Systems node and right-click the Windows 7 folder and choose Import Operating System.
The OS Type page (Figure 11) shows the three types of images you can import. Accept the default selection, Full Set Of Source Files, and click Next.
On the Source page (Figure 12),
click the Browse button to navigate to your full set of source files,
which can be from either the root of a Windows 7 DVD or a folder where
you have copied the entire Windows 7 DVD (the D: drive in Figure 12). Once you have browsed to your full set of source files, click Next.
The Destination page shown in Figure 13 prompts you for the name of the folder to be created in the F:\MDTLab\Operating Systems
folder. This folder will not appear in the Deployment Workbench; to
view the newly created folder you'll need to use Windows Explorer and
browse to your deployment share's Operating Systems folder (ours was on the F: drive). Accept the default name of "Windows 7 x86" or enter any you prefer, and then click Next.
The
Summary page displays the details of the Import Operating System Wizard
just as it did in the New Deployment Share Wizard. To make any changes,
click the Previous button to reach the page you'd like to change, then
click Next.
The
Progress page is displayed, and when the process finishes the
Confirmation page appears. Once again you have the View Script button
(showing the PowerShell commands run to import an OS), and the Save
Output button that will dump the contents of the Confirmation page to a
text file. Importing image files can take a while, depending on the
size of the image and the speed of your server. Click Finish on the
Confirmation page and you're back in the Deployment Workbench with the
Operating Systems node highlighted. The new OS is displayed in the
details pane, as shown in Figure 12.
With MDT 2010, you can create folder structures to
help organize everything in your Deployment Workbench. You can also use
it to move around objects, using drag and drop, but we prefer copy and
paste. When you copy and paste or drag and drop it does not affect the
underlying file system behind the scenes; the folder structure you see
in the deployment workbench is logical, not physical. The purpose of
this is to make it possible to organize a large number of files and
folders without consuming as much space as it would if the structure
were physical. It also gives us the opportunity to work with the
content as an object from a programmatic point of view.
Additionally, if you have multiple
deployment shares, you can use the Deployment Workbench to connect to
all of them at the same time and move objects between them. That
ability is really nice. Just remember to use F5 to update the screen
whenever you start moving things around.
