Mass deployment of files

You should use this delimiter only for development and testing. We don't recommend that you use it for a standard installation. Note that silent servicing maintains all components that are currently installed.

If any configuration is still required, complete it before you begin to follow the instructions in this topic. This section shows examples of commands that are used for legacy self-service mass deployment.

These commands work for all the standard installers, such as the installers for Modern POS both the installer that has offline support and the installer that doesn't have offline support , Hardware station, and Commerce Scale Unit self-hosted. The following command silently updates the current installation of Modern POS.

This command has the standard command structure that is used for silent servicing of components that are currently installed. This command uses the configuration file that is located in the same file location as the installer, if a configuration file exists there. A configuration file is still required for Retail Store Scale Unit.

However, the installer keeps all the values that are currently installed, whenever it can. The following command silently updates the current installation of Commerce Scale Unit self-hosted by using a specific configuration file.

This configuration file might not be in the same location as the executable file for the installer. This command skips the prerequisite check and moves on to the installation steps. We recommend that you use this command only for testing and development purposes.

To use this functionality, you must be using version 7. In addition to network-based deployments, MDT supports the use of offline media-based deployments of Windows You can very easily generate an offline version of your deployment share - either the full deployment share or a subset of it - through the use of selection profiles.

Offline media are useful not only when you do not have network connectivity to the deployment share, but also when you have limited connection to the deployment share and do not want to copy 5 GB of data over the wire. Offline media can still join the domain, but you save the transfer of operating system images, drivers, and applications over the wire. To filter what is being added to the media, you create a selection profile. When creating selection profiles, you quickly realize the benefits of having created a good logical folder structure in the Deployment Workbench.

In these steps, you generate offline media from the MDT Production deployment share. To filter what is being added to the media, you use the previously created selection profile. When creating offline media, you need to create the target folder first. It is crucial that you do not create a subfolder inside the deployment share folder because it will break the offline media.

Offline media has its own rules, its own Bootstrap. These files are stored in the Control folder of the offline media; they also can be accessed via properties of the offline media in the Deployment Workbench.

Copy the CustomSettings. Overwrite the existing files. On the Drivers and Patches sub tab, select the WinPE x64 selection profile and select the Include all drivers from the selection profile option. You have now configured the offline media deployment share, however the share has not yet been populated with the files required for deployment. Now everything is ready you populate the deployment share content folder and generate the offline media ISO.

The process might require several minutes. The ISO that you got when updating the offline media item can be burned to a DVD and used directly it will be bootable , but it is often more efficient to use USB sticks instead since they are faster and can hold more data.

A dual-layer DVD is limited to 8. In this example, the. Alternatively to keep using the USB you must split the. Windows Setup automatically installs from this file, provided you name it install. The file names for the next files include numbers, for example: install2.

To enable split image in MDT, the Settings. Start an elevated command prompt run as Administrator , and start the Diskpart utility by typing Diskpart and pressing Enter.

In the Diskpart utility, you can type list volume or the shorter list vol to list the volumes, but you really only need to remember the drive letter of the USB stick to which you copied the content. In our example, the USB stick had the drive letter F. You do not need to update or change your task sequences in any way to accommodate UEFI. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported. Download Microsoft Edge More info. Contents Exit focus mode. Is this page helpful? Please rate your experience Yes No.

Any additional feedback? Note For details about the setup for the procedures in this article, please see Prepare for deployment with MDT. From a few PCs, to hundreds, the requirements were the same, to deploy the same configuration with as little, repetitive work as possible. Many shops do not operate that way, and have some level of interaction required during the imaging process. This piece will discuss creating a Windows install for distribution.

Virtual machine software for the creation workspace. Two reasons. First, virtual machines provide the option to create hardware-neutral images which can be applied anywhere, regardless of what is actually in the target computer. One image becomes possible for multiple hardware configurations. This also involves less work in mainatining the image as any work only needs to be done once and not x-times per different type of hardware. Should a screw-up occur, it can be undone without loosing work or have to re-do everything.

These are two facets that are simply not available with building images on real hardware. Test on real hardware, but build in a virtual environment. The build workstation has to have some power to it. Nothing extravagant like an Alienware, or Falcon Northwest gaming rig, but above average. Try to avoid using a laptop as a VM build station.

Laptops are great for testing, but a desktop PC is optimal. The more powerful, the better. RAM is the key. The more the better. VMs take up storage space quickly. Create a new VM that will become your Windows image. Now, it is easy to see how fast space will go on your drives.

Everything else is fine with the defaults. Bridged vs. NAT network adapter? Install Windows onto the VM with all of the default settings. Place the unattend file at the root of your install media and let Windows install itself. The whole process for Windows should be minutes. Sysprep will just strip that out in the end.

If your build process takes longer than a month, you might need the key and activation. Sysprep will quit if it is run on a domain-joined PC. Next, power-down not sleep, hibernate, or pause the VM and create a snapshot or checkpoint.

This will save you minutes of re-installing should a foul-up occur. All of the stuff I know the end users will not touch. Before getting into the nitty-gritty of configuration, completely update Windows through Microsoft Update. The older your version of Windows, the more updates it will need, and the longer the update process will take.

One might think about adding MS Office into this process to allow it to join in the update process, but there is a reason not. Take this opportunity of having a clean install of Windows, updated, and use it as a template for other VMs.

VMware Workstation allows VMs to be cloned and copied, so a patched copy of Windows can serve as a starting point for other virtual machine projects. Clone or continue? Shut down and take a snapshot when that part is done.

Add all of the applications that need to be deployed with the image. Here is where the question of thin image vs. A thin image contains just the bare essentials needed to get started with many other apps installed at distribution. Software that has first-run settings which must be answered for the end user should be placed into the image, and not installed at deploy time.

We install many apps with our image, so this process takes us about as long as it does to update Windows and Office. Get Help. Do I need TPM? Technical Details. Mass Deployment. Known Issues. Target Audience These guides are intended for advanced IT administrators deploying CloudReady in an environment with a pre-existing mass deployment infrastructure. These guides also assume that the reader has previous experience with configuring and using the given the specific mass deployment tool that the guide is associated with.

Note: For organizations deploying CloudReady to fewer than machines, we recommend using our automated USB maker tool, as it typically results in faster deployment times. The standard installation files available on my. Please contact support to have one created for you at no charge. The process will generally take business days. Access and approx. A network account with the proper read access to the share.

Customize settings for your network 1. Continuing the guide's example, this would be the password created for the deploycloudready account. BIN: The name of the large. Save the startnet. Some additional notes about startnet. In this case, we perform a machine wipe and replace write the new CloudReady image to disk. You can read more about the purpose of the startnet. Launch an elevated command prompt running as administrator. Expand the server that currently hosts your PXE images.

Note: If the working directory for the CloudReady share created in previous steps is on a different server than the WDS server, the cloudready.