Windows Deployment Services and the Microsoft Deployment
Toolkit use boot images. They are used to boot up bare-metal machines
and to allow a setup routine to wipe an existing PC and replace its
operating system. ConfigMgr has the same needs. Nothing new is used
here. The same core technologies are reused. The only thing that is
different is how the boot images are created and how they are shared.
A boot image is created in the Configuration Manager
Console. Drivers are added to allow access to the network and to mass
storage controllers. The boot image is shared to existing PCs via a
distribution point, which is one of the Site Role Services that was
deployed. The boot image is shared to bare-metal machines via the PXE
service point (which makes use of the underlying Windows Deployment
Services), which also has a distribution point that will be populated.
1. Creating Boot Images
Let's start by creating the 32-bit or x86 boot
images. ConfigMgr gives you the tools to create 32- and 64-bit boot
images from within the Configuration Manager Console.
Navigate into Computer Management\Operating System Deployment, as shown in Figure 1. You are going to be spending a lot of time here if you plan on doing ZTI using ConfigMgr.
To
create a new boot image, right-click on Boot Images and select Create
Boot Image Using Microsoft Deployment. This launches a wizard, as you
can see in Figure 2.
On
the first screen, enter a path for where, in the distribution point
shared folder that you created earlier, you want to store the new boot
image. Try to use a naming standard.
As with previous package creations, enter descriptive content into Name and Version, which is shown in Figure 3.
The
Image Options screen allows you to configure the boot image. You can
choose the architecture (x86 or x64). We will start by creating a 32-bit
(x86) boot image, as shown in Figure 4.
You can select optional fonts for Asian regional settings support. You
can even add a custom image as the background when the boot image is
running or additional files for troubleshooting. Make sure that ADO is
selected as it will be required.
The boot image is created. All that
remains is to make the boot image available to machines on the network.
As you might remember, you need to add the boot image to a distribution
point.
Navigate
into the Boot Images folder, select the new boot image, right-click on
it, and select Manage Distribution Points Wizard. Choose the option to
copy the package to new distribution points.
Select
both the normal distribution point and the PXE distribution point. The
normal distribution point will be used to distribute the boot image when
an existing installation of Windows will be replaced with a
ConfigMgr-distributed installation image. The PXE distribution point
will be used when a computer (for example, bare metal) is booted up onto
the network to do a fresh installation.
Repeat
this process to create and share an x64 or 64-bit boot image. It is
required to handle some hardware that reports itself as x64 even if you
are distributing an x86 installation image.
Once a boot image is created,
you can open its properties to view or edit the settings. For example,
you might develop your boot image and later add that background image to
brand the deployment solution with the company logo. You could enable
distribution points to be updated on a recurring schedule to accommodate
changes to the boot image.
