Hello World,

Today, we have some spare time and we want to quickly describe the installation steps for MDT 2013.  If you are familiar with MDT technology, you will see that in terms of setup nothing has really changed.   The main change in this release is the fact that you will need to install the ADK 8.1 (Automated Deployment Kit) in order to have your MDT installation able to deploy Windows 8/Windows 2012 or later version of Operating systems.

As you will see, the installation and configuration process will be the same as for the MDT 2012 version.  If you need to have more information about the MDT 2012 version, please review our MDT  2012 series

Part II – MDT 2013 – Standalone Configuration – Add WDS Components

Our Scenario

When performing deployment, we always try to create an independent deployment infrastructure.  If you follow us, you know that we have already described how to create such standalone configuration (see http://c-nergy.be/blog/?p=2026).  In our previous  post, we were using a custom TFTP solutions.

In this post series, we will use exclusively Microsoft Technologies in order to create a  standalone instance of MDT 2013 and using WDS components as TFTP solution.

For this post, we are assuming that the installation will be performed on a Windows 2008 R2 server.   In this post , we will focus on the installation of the MDT 2013 components.  In the part II, we will describe how to install the WDS components in order to have full TFTP capability in a standalone configuration.  In Part III, we will quickly describe how to use the WDS role in combination with MDT 2013 and you will see that Microsoft has made this action really straight forward.

MDT 2013 Installation Instructions

Step 1 – Download the MDT 2013 package from the following link

Step 2 – Download the ADK 8.1 package from the following link.  This is optional if your machine is connected to internet

Step 3 – On your Windows 2008 R2 Standalone Server, you will need to install the Framework 3.5 SP1 pacakge.   We will use the powershell command to perform the installation. Open the PowerShell command prompt and type the following

Import-module ServerManager

Add-WindowsFeature AS-NET-FRAMEWORK

Step 4 –  Go to the folder where you have downloaded your MDT package and double-click on it

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Step 5 – In the Welcome Page, Press Next

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Step 6 – In the License agreement page, accept it and Press Next

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Step 7 – In the Custom setup page, accept defaults and Press Next

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Step 8 – In the Customer experience, choose your option and press Next

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Step 9 – In the Ready to Install Page,  Press Install

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Step 10 – Wait for the installation to complete

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Step 11– In the Completed Page, Press Finish

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ADK Installation instructions

If you open the Deployment WorkBench and click on Components node. You will see that you need to install the ADK 8.1 components.  You can perform an automated installation if your machine is connected to internet or you can perform a manual installation.

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Automated Installation

If you machine is connected to internet, you can click on the ADK 8.1 and at the bottom pane, you can click on Download button.  This will download the package and perform the installation automatically for you.  You are ready to create your Deployment share and configure your MDT 2013 system.

Manual Installation

If you are not connected to internet, you will need to perform an manual installation.

Step 1 – Go to the folder where you have downloaded the ADK package. Double-click on it

Step 2 – In the Microsoft.NET page, accept the license agreement and click on the Accept and Install Button

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Step 3 – In the specify location path Page, accept default and Press Next

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Step 4 -In the Customer Experience Page, select your option and Press Next 

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Step 5 – In the License Agreement page, Click on Accept 

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Step 6 – In the Select feature page, choose your options.  Press Install.

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The screenshot shows the minimum components required.

Step 7 – Wait for installation to complete

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Step 8 – In the Welcome Page, Press Close 

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Note :

If you perform an offline installation, you might see that in the deployment  Workbench > Components Node, the ADK component is still required.  To avoid confusion for the operator, we have modified the xml file located under <%ProgramFiles%>\Microsoft Deployment Toolkit\Downloads\{000-000000000} folder and updated the componentList.xml file.  We have changed the value from True to false at the line which checks for the ADK Component.

Upgrading to MDT 2013

If you do have already a working MDT 2012 infrastructure and just want to upgrade to MDT 2013, this is possible. You will need to perform the following steps

Step 1 – Download and Install the ADK 8.1

Step 2 – Download and Install the MDT 2013

Step 3 – Within your Deployment Workbench console, go to the Deployment Share>right-click on it and select the option Update Deployment Share

Step 4 – After the update has been performed, you should be able to open your Deployment share within the MDT 2013 Deployment Workbench

Final Notes

In this post, we have seen how to perform the installation of MDT 2013.  To have a working MDT 2013 configuration, you will need to download and install the ADK 8.1 before you can create a deployment Share.  As stated in the beginning of this post, if you are used to work with MDT 2013, there is not real changed compared to the MDT 2012 in the way you work and configure it.

In the next part of this series, we will configure the WDS components in order to add TFTP capabilities to the system.  Few people know that since Windows 2008 R2, you can install the WDS Role (part of it actually) in a stand alone configuration.  The process is not too complex but there is no GUI to perform the configuration. Stick to us and you will see how we perform such configuration

Till Next Time

See ya

 Part II – MDT 2013 – Standalone Configuration – Add WDS Components