Archive for October, 2009|Monthly archive page
Windows 7 Reference Task Sequence Creation With ConfigMgr and MDT Integration
Filed under: Configuration Manager, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, Windows 7, Zero Touch |
Leave a Comment A customer earlier in the week had implemented ConfigMgr for their builds and was getting good results with it. They hadn’t implemented MDT as they couldn’t see the benefit, so with this series of posts I’m going to highlight why we mostly do it this way, and what benefits using MDT Task Sequences brings.
Now that SP2 for ConfigMgr is in Release Candidate (and due for RTM at the end of October according to Mr Niehaus) we can use this stuff for Windows 7 deployment.
First up, install SQL, ConfigMgr, its dependencies, and MDT 2010 RTM.
Now, integrate MDT with ConfigMgr by clicking
Now open the ConfigMgr console. nothing much has changed, but you have a couple of new options when you right click in the OS Deployment node. You can create MDT Boot Media clicking in boot images and you can create an MDT Task Sequence clicking in Task Sequences, let’s do that now!
When we do this we are prompted to pick a template. So, here’s the first benefit with MDT. More pre-configured templates:
The standard ConfigMgr task sequence only gives three options:
Further to that, the ConfigMgr standard Task Sequence expects you to have set up all of the dependent packages, boot images, etc. yourself before running through the wizard. MDT will create them for you if required…
Ok, so we pick to deploy the MDT Client Task Sequence, I can already tell that this is going to be a rambling post, but the first thing of note is that you no longer have to provide a capture destination if you’re not going to be doing a capture. Hurray, a minor irritant squashed (it’s the little things…)!
That said, I need to capture this build, so I fill in the box.
With the standard ConfigMgr task sequence, I’d need to select one of the pre-built boot images, but I want the goodness of ADO and other brilliant, so I get MDT to make a special one just for me:
The MDT asks if you want other languages, a custom wallpaper (I always make mine in PowerPoint, some of the templates make for pretty wallpapers, when there’s all this technology around there’s still no getting away from the fact that the customers like their logos on things, and why not.). On the same screen as the wallpaper, language, ADO options etc. you can also provide an extra directory to add. I put my diag tools in here (Trace32.exe etc.) they make life easier if you have problems in PE).
I create a Deployment Toolkit File Package. This holds all the scripts and bits that the MDT task sequence needs. Those of you still with us may notice that I put everything in a sub-folder of a root folder called OSImaging. This keeps things nice and tidy as far as I’m concerned, and is something I recommend.
Now MDT wants to create our OS package for us. Again under the standard ConfigMgr task sequence you’d have to do this outside of the wizard.
It also creates the ConfigMgr client package for you. Again, it’s not hard to do yourself, but why bother when the wizard can sort you out…
and USMT package:
Last thing is the MDT Settings Package. This handles the unattend.xml and customsettings.ini files.
We don’t need Sysprep, so can skip the final screen and then we’re ready. The wizard goes off and creates all the objects listed above.
Once it’s finished we just need to add the packages created to distribution points (this includes the OS install, so it can take a little while). I’ve got a PXE Service Point, so I add my new boot image to that DP too.
Next we’ll deploy and capture this and then start to look at the clever stuff we can do with the MDT integration to streamline deployment and support advanced deployment scenarios.
DPM 2010 Beta 1
As I’m all Hyper-V R2 for my demo environment I figure I may as well have a look at DPM 2010 Beta 1 than deploy the excellent DPM 2007 SP1 (there’s no Hyper-V R2 support in the current version).
I’ve created a new Server 2008 R2 x64 VM and downloaded the DPM beta.
I have also created a new LUN on my excellent Qnap TS-119 called “Backup”.
The iSCSI initiator on the new DMP VM connects to this:
Disk administrator wants me to initialize the disk:
Now I’m ready to give this disk to DPM. I don’t need to format it, DPM will manage that.
DPM’s setup routine is very attractive!
Oops, I’m not logged on with domain credentials. Also the Single Instance Storage engine isn’t installed. DPM setup will handle this, but it’ll need a reboot.
I’ve been lazily using the built in Administrator account to date, Windows has a minor irritation of thinking you want to log on locally when you type in “Administrator” and switches the logon context as you type, consequently you have to enter DOMAIN\Administrator every time. Perhaps it’s best if I create a new account, this also gives me chance to try out Windows Server 2008 R2 “Active Directory Administrative Center”
I don’t do a lot of support, but I can see that this thing would be a boon for account management types. No more multiple-dialogue-tab hell, just everything in a nice neat expandable list. You can remove the sections that you don’t use and get everything relevant in a great, easy to use view:
What’s not to like, this is great. The search is really quick and doesn’t suffer from the terrible user interface horrors of AD U&C.
Anyway, back to the DPM install…
Logged on with my new domain credentials I’m good to go!
This being an R2 server I already have PowerShell and Installer 4.5, so the SIS goes in.
DPM comes with its own copy of SQL 2008, unlike the rest of the System Center Suite… Quite why this is I have no idea, but if you wish you can let it do its own thing with SQL… 
And we’re done.
I then pushed out an agent to a test SQL box from the Management node. On this server I’d created a dummy database with a single table. I added two dummy records to this table, then created a DPM Protection Group to protect this database.
One of the new features is illustrated above, I can now protect a SQL Instance (HYPERV-VMM above) the bonus being that whenever I add a new database it’s automatically protected.
I left this running for a while and now I can recover back to any point in time:
I delete some records from my demo database, pick a time from just before I did that and as if by magic, the data reappears…
With DPM I can elect to recover my data in a few different ways. One cool feature with SQL restore is I can take a SQL 2005 backup and recover to SQL 2008.
Having selected my recovery option I see a summary of the items to be recovered, then we’re done.
When this completes, the restore is complete. The DPM interface is very polished, I reckon it’s hard to get excited about backup, but there’s some really good stuff here and with the integration of online services (DPM to cloud backup) things get very interesting…
A Portable Highly Available Hyper-V and System Center Demo Environment – Making Progress
I’ve had the various bits and pieces that I outlined in my earlier post for a few weeks and have had some time to play around with it.
I started out booting Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 from the USB sticks, this works brilliantly but caused me a few headaches… The primary problem is that I want to be able to administer the Hyper-V instance from a remote Windows 7 laptop. This proved to be pretty complicated without the two being in a domain. It’s possible to get most of the way clear outside of the domain using WinRM TrustedHosts and a few other little tips and tricks. This eventually allowed me to load Server Manager remotely, but I absolutely could not get Disk Administrator to load from the remote machine and didn’t have much better luck with Hyper-V Administrator either.
After getting tied in knots with this I eventually created a physical DC, added my Hyper-V Server machine (booted from USB) and my Windows 7 laptop to the domain and I could then do all the admin I liked. This is fine, but obviously I don’t want to have to carry around an additional physical DC, so I P-V’d this into Hyper-V (probably not a great idea). All was fine until I shut everything down. I’m now in a situation where my Hyper-V server is joined to a domain which is virtualised upon itself. This leads to some, err, inconsistencies in the stability of the environment.
After a few late nights and plenty of red wine one of our Active Directory consultants took pity on me. We decided the best approach was to scrap the Hyper-V Server approach for the first node and install Server 2008 R2 on the physical laptop, make this a Hyper-V machine, then make it a domain controller in a shiny new domain. This done, it’s been solid as a rock. Obviously in a live infrastructure these issues would never arise and we would always plan to maintain at least one physical DC.
I now have a stable, currently single node, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V laptop and have virtualised a few machines to provide Virtual Machine Manager and Configuration Manager. Next up is DPM 2010, so more on that shortly.
A last point worth making is that performance is very good. Taking the storage away from the laptop hard disk to a much higher performing iSCSI device makes a massive difference to the performance of the VMs. I have a virtualised Windows 7 machine running Office 2010 very happily within this environment which I just RDP into for email, presentations, etc.
