Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2008 R2 : Automating the installation process - Installing and configuring WDS

It is likely that you will find yourself installing Windows Server 2008 R2 more than once or twice. Microsoft has done a great job of making the Windows Server 2008 R2 installation fast and administrator friendly; however, as you begin to deploy more servers on your network, you will want to make the deployment process more efficient than inserting the DVD into each server, booting the server, and manually going through the installation process. Microsoft has provided some great tools to help automate the installation process. After the automation features have been set up, Windows can be deployed to tens, hundreds, or thousands of servers with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Overview of Windows Deployment Services

Windows Deployment Services (WDS) is a server role that allows you to easily create and manage standard Windows installations or images and rapidly deploy them to servers and workstations on your network. WDS was first introduced in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2. WDS replaces previous deployment services, such as Remote Installation Services (RIS) for Windows workstations and Automated Deployment Services (ADS) for Windows Servers.

There are several considerations that you must take into account when setting up WDS. WDS requires proper infrastructural components that it depends on already deployed. Before using WDS, you must ensure that the following are set up and configured properly on your network:

• Active Directory Domain Services—The WDS Server must be a member of an existing Active Directory Domain.

• DNS—WDS requires a DNS infrastructure already set up and configured.

• DHCP—In order for WDS to function properly, a DHCP service must be available on your network.

• PreBoot Execution Environment (PXE) Boot capable server—Server that you wish to use WDS to deploy the OS to should support PXE. PXE is the process of booting a computer from its network adapter. Typically, this process involves downloading a boot image from the networks and loading it into the computer's memory. This feature is available on most of the standard NICs that come with enterprise servers today.

Notes from the field

WDS and network bandwidth

As you may assume, deploying Windows via WDS requires pushing a significant amount of files over the network. WDS uses multicast technologies to ensure that multiple simultaneous OS deployments do not bring your network to its knees. By using multicast, you can deploy Windows to multiple computers via one multicast network stream.

Installing and configuring WDS

After ensuring that the necessary WDS prerequisites are met, you will be ready to install and configure the WDS server role. To install and configure WDS, perform the following steps:

1. Open Server Manager by going to Start | Administrative Tools | Server Manager.

2. From the Roles node, click on the Add Roles link. This will launch the Add Roles Wizard. Click Next to begin adding the WDS role.

3. Select the Windows Deployment Services role as seen in Figure 1 then click Next.

   

   Figure 1 Select Windows Deployment Services Role.

4. On the Windows Deployment Services overview page, click Next.

5. Choose to install both the Deployment Server and Transport Server role services. Then click Next.

6. Click the Install button on the Confirm Installation Selections screen. This will complete the installation of the WDS server role.

Once installation is complete, you can access the WDS server management console via Server Manager as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Windows Deployment Services Management Console.

Enable WDS services and adding images

We now need to configure the server for WDS and enable the service. To accomplish this, perform the following:

1. Locate and expand the Windows Deployment Services node in Server Manager. Then expand the Servers sub-node.

2. Right click on the server name and select the Configure Server option as seen in Figure 3. This will launch the Windows Deployment Services Configuration Wizard. Click Next to begin WDS configuration.

   

   Figure 3 The Configure Server Option.

   Choose the location where you wish to store the images and installation files to be deployed via WDS (see Figure 4). You need to ensure that this location is large enough to store large files. Microsoft does not recommend using the same drive as the OS to store images. Click Next to continue.

   

   Figure 4 Remote Installation Location.

   You now need to select how you want WDS to respond to PXE clients. You have three options to choose from. They are as follows:

   • Do not respond to any client computers—This option will tell WDS not to respond to any PXE requests. This option effectively disables the ability of WDS to respond to PXE boot requests.

   • Respond only to known client computers—This option allows WDS to respond to PXE requests only from computers that have been prestaged with accounts setup in Active Directory prior to contacting the WDS server. A computer is prestaged by using Active Directory Users and Computers to manually create a new computer account. When the computer name is entered during the WDS deployment process, the computer is connected to the prestaged account already set up in Active Directory.

   • Respond to all client computers (known and unknown)—This option instructs WDS to always respond to PXE boot requests. If the checkbox to Require administrator approval for unknown computers is checked, then computers that are not prestaged in Active Directory will require an administrator to first approve the PXE boot request before allowing the requesting computer to review a boot image from the WDS server.

   • After selecting a WDS PXE option, click Next. The Wizard will then configure and start WDS services. After you are taken to the Operation Complete, click on the Finish button.

   • If you have left the Add images option checked prior to clicking on the Finish button, you will be taken to the Add Images Wizard. If you have unchecked the box, you can easily add images by right clicking on the Install Images or Boot Images node and click on the option to add image.

   • To add a boot image, right click on the Boot Images folder and choose the Add Boot Image option.

   • For our example, we will add the default boot image from the Windows Server 2008 R2 DVD. The boot image is used to provide an initial operating environment to load the OS. The boot image allows the system to boot to a state where the OS can be installed. You must use a boot image anytime you want to load the OS via an image or unattended installation. The image is located in the sources folder on the DVD. Select this file path as seen in Figure 5 and then click Next.

     

     Figure 5 Windows Deployment Services Boot Image.

   • Enter a name for the boot image (the default is Microsoft Windows Setup (×64)) and then click Next.

   • Click Next again to begin the process of copying the boot image to the WDS server.

   • After receiving confirmation that the operation has been completed successfully, click on the Finish button.

   • You should now see the Boot Image listed as shown in Figure 6.

     

     Figure 6 Windows Installation Boot Image.

   • You can perform the above steps to add the default Windows images to the Install Images folder. To add the installation images, choose the installation.wim file instead of the boot.wim.

You should now have an active WDS server on your network. To test WDS PXE boot a server without Windows installed and see if it boots from the WDS server.

Unattended installation and automated deployment

You can use a combination of unattend.xml files, and the WDS schedule-cast option to fully automate Windows OS deployments. By using the Windows Automated Installation Kit, you can create custom unattend.xml files to customize the installation by performing actions, such as entering the product key, automatically adding specific server roles, and setting the default time zone. You can then use the WDS schedule-cast option to schedule automatic deployment of installation to servers.

Notes from the field

Virtual machine deployment

You can use WDS to deploy Windows to virtual machines in the same way as you deploy Windows to physical servers; however, most administrators choose to use virtual machine templates for faster deployment. Since virtual machines are really just files, you can simply copy the files to create a new server.