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Designing a Lite-Touch Deployment (part 1) - Understanding Lite-Touch Deployment Requirements

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9/20/2011 5:44:24 PM

1. Understanding Lite-Touch Deployment Requirements

The majority of the LTI deployment process occurs in a lab environment. It is not until you are ready to actually deploy Windows 7 onto your target workstations that the production network is involved. The first step in the LTI deployment process is to assemble the components you need to create your lab environment.

1.1. Having a Plan

Careful planning is an essential part of any deployment project, and you should have a complete plan in hand before you begin any of the LTI implementation steps discussed in this lesson.

For example, you should at this point have already decided how many workstation configurations you intend to deploy and how many target computers are to receive each one. You should have a timetable prepared that specifies how long you have to create and test your image files before you must deploy them to the target workstations. You should be conscious of where the target computers will be during the deployment and how the deployment process might affect the production network. These and dozens of other issues must be considered, discussed, and documented before the actual deployment process even begins.

1.2. Gathering Your Hardware

The central hardware component of an LTI deployment project is the build computer, which is where you install Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 and Windows 7 Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK). The build computer can be a Windows server or workstation; its requirements depend on how you have designed your deployment lab.

1.2.1. Locating the Deployment Share

As part of the LTI deployment process, you must create a deployment share, which is where you will store the installation and image files your other computers will need during the deployment process. If you use the build computer to host the deployment share, you must equip it with an appropriate amount of storage and be conscious of the fact that your target computers will eventually be downloading image files that are several gigabytes in size from this computer. You should also consider whether you will be using Windows Deployment Services (WDS) as part of your deployment strategy because WDS is supplied as a role in the Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems.

At minimum, the build computer can be a basic workstation running Windows 7 (or Windows Vista), which uses an existing server to host the deployment share and WDS. The workstation therefore would need only the resources required to run the MDT 2010 and Windows 7 AIK tools. If you want to create a build computer that handles all aspects of the deployment, a server would be preferable and might in fact be essential if you plan to deploy many target computers simultaneously or use WDS.

1.2.2. Allocating Storage Space

Wherever you choose to host the deployment share, you must be conscious of the amount of storage space the deployment process requires. The deployment share first must have sufficient space to hold all of the components needed to install the reference computers. This includes the operating system distribution files, as well as operating system language packs, device drivers, and applications. In addition, the share needs sufficient space to hold the images you capture of the reference computers. Keep in mind that every operating system version, edition, and processor type requires a separate set of distribution files and a separate image.


Note:

STORING USER STATE DATA

Another storage factor to consider is whether you want to perform deployments using the Replace Computer or Refresh Computer scenario, both of which include task sequence commands that save the user state data from the existing Windows workstations to an alternative location. If you use the computer hosting the deployment share for this purpose, you must plan for that additional storage space as well.


1.2.3. Selecting Reference Computers

The other hardware component of your LTI deployment lab is one or more reference computers, which you will use to capture images of your workstation configurations. This component is flexible also. If you are planning to deploy target computers with different hardware configurations, and particularly computers with devices requiring different drivers, your lab should have at least one reference computer for each configuration.

If your workstation configurations differ only in their software, such as different combinations of applications, the number of reference computers you need is based more on the time and personnel available for the deployment project. You could have just one reference computer in the lab and use it to install and capture each workstation configuration sequentially. Alternatively, you could equip the lab with a separate reference computer for each workstation configuration and have technicians install and capture them all simultaneously.

For deployment projects with a definitive endpoint, the reference computers can be workstations that you eventually deploy on the production network as target computers. Some projects are ongoing, however, in which case it might be preferable to have lab systems permanently allocated as reference computers.

1.3. Gathering Your Software

For the build computer itself, you must download MDT 2010 from the Microsoft Web site, along with Windows 7 AIK, which MDT requires to function. To populate the deployment share, you need the distribution files for all of the Windows 7 editions and processor platforms you plan to install, as well as the device drivers, language packs, and installation packages you plan to deploy with the operating system.

1.4. Building the Lab

All of the phases of the deployment project until the actual target computer deployment can take place in a laboratory environment that is completely separate from the production network. The primary function of the lab is to create the image files that you eventually deploy to your target computers. Although you can use the same build computer to deploy the reference computers and later deploy your captured images to the target computers, this does not have to be so. You can create multiple build computers, with one on the isolated lab network and another on the production network, or you can create multiple deployment shares on a single build computer, with different servers hosting them.

If you decide to create an isolated lab, remember that it must have the same infrastructure services as your production network, including an Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) domain controller, a Domain Name System (DNS) server, and a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server.

2. Building Reference Computers

In the LTI deployment documentation, the process of building reference computers and capturing images of them is automated using a task sequence. However, it is not essential that you proceed in this manner.

The sole reason for building reference computers is to capture the images that you eventually deploy to your target computers. As long as you successfully create baseline installations on the reference computers that are suitable for image capture, how you perform those installations is irrelevant. Therefore, if you prefer to install and configure the reference computers manually, which might be preferable in a deployment project with a relatively small number of workstation configurations, you can do so.

Other -----------------
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- Understanding the Windows 7 Deployment Process (part 3) - Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010
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