Hello World,

Again, we are back on deployment topics and techniques.  In part I, we have seen how to perform a standard installation of MDT 2013.  We have then completed the installation process by installing the ADK 8.1 components.  We didn’t perform any configuration yet.

In this post, we want to demonstrate how you can  setup a standalone MDT configuration while using WDS role (actually we will only install a small part of the role).  By adding the WDS part, we will basically add the PXE and TFTP features to our server.

When this configuration part will be performed and completed, we should be able to deploy OS using MDT 2013 in a stand alone configuration.

Let’s do this !

Note : 

In this post, we assume that you are using Windows 2008 R2 computer. We will explain in another post how to configure a standalone MDT 2013 Configuration on Windows 2012 R2 at a later stage.

Create your Deployment Share

Because we just wanna demonstrate the addition of WDS, we will perform only a limited set of configuration on the MDT 2013.  To ease the process and avoid errors, we will create the deployment share before installing the WDS component.

To create your deployment share, open the Deployment WorkBench, go the the deployment shares node;

Right-click on it and select New Deployment Share

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In the Path Page, specify where you want to create your MDT folder. Keep track of this as it will be used for the WDS configuration tweaks. Press Next  

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In the Share Page, provide a share name and Press Next

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In Description Page, accept default and  Press Next

In Options Page, Select your options and Press Next

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In Summary Page, review your settings and Press Next

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In Progress Page, wait for the operation to complete and press Next

In Confirmation Page, Press Finish

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At this stage, we will also generate the iso and wim file needed to boot into WINPE mode.  To create these files; you simply need to open the Deployment Workbench, go the the deployment shares node; right-click on it and select Update Deployment Share.  The Wizard starts

In the Options page, accept default and Press Next

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In the Summary Page, Press Next

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In Progress Page, wait for the operation to complete and press Next

In Confirmation Page, Press Finish

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Because we want to still perform a custom installation of WDS and not to use the default structure provided by the WDS installation process, we will need to populate our %DeploymentShare%>\Boot with some additional files.

So, It’s time to move to the next section

 

Populate the Tftp Folder structure

If you go to your Deployment share (in my scenario, it’s located at c:\MDT), you can see a folder structure created by MDT wizard.   If you go to the <%Deployment Share%>\Boot, you should see something like this.

 

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In this folder, we need to copy some files needed for the tftp boot process to work as expected.  We need to find out the following files :

• Boot.sdi
• BootMgr.exe
• pxeboot.n12
• BCD

 

Where do you get this files ?  Some of the files can be extracted from the LiteTouch_PE_xx.wim files that have been generated when you have updated the deployment share. Another File will be simply copied over from the MDT deployment share. Finally, the BCD file need to be generated  in order to reflect our custom setup.  Let’s go

Obtain the bootmgr.exe and pxeboot.n12 files

To extract the files, you will need to perform the following actions

Step 1 –  Click on the start menu>Windows ADK>Deployment and Imaging Tools Env

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Step 2  – In the command prompt that just opened,  create an empty folder where to mount  the wim file. In my case,  have issued the following command

mkdir c:\Mount

Step 3 – It’s time to mount the wim image by issuing the following command  (adapt the command to your environment)

Dism /mount-Wim /WimFile:c:\MDT\boot\LiteTouchPE_X64.wim  /mountDir:C:\Mount /index:1

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Step 4 – Browse to the folder where you have mounted the wim file (in my case c:\mount) and go to the folder ..\windows\Boot\PXE.  As shown in the screenshot, select the bootmgr.exe file and the pxeboot.n12 file and copy them into the <%DeploymentShare%>\Boot (in my case c:\MDT\boot)

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 Obtain the boot.sdi file

We still need to get the boot.sdi file.  This file is already present on your MDT Server.  If you browse to your <%DeploymentShare%>\Boot\x86\boot, you will find the boot.sdi.  Copy this file into your <%DeploymentShare%>\Boot folder

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 Generate the BCD File

 To generate the bcd file, we have created this small batch file. You have to adapt the batch file to reflect your environment.  The only change you should perform is the location of the bcd file.  The file should be located under <%DepmoymentShare%>\Boot

 

REM ————————————————————————–
REM Creates BCD (boot configuration data) for MDT 2013 combined with WDS
REM —————————————————————————

REM CHANGE AS REQUIRED
REM ——————-
set BCD-File=C:\MDT\Boot\bcd
del %BCD-File%
Bcdedit /createstore %BCD-File%
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /create {ramdiskoptions}
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdidevice boot
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdipath \boot\boot.sdi

for /f “tokens=1-3” %%a in (‘Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /create /d “WinPE x86” /application osloader’) do set guid1=%%c
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set %guid1% systemroot \Windows
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set %guid1% detecthal Yes
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set %guid1% winpe Yes
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set %guid1% osdevice ramdisk=[boot]\boot\LiteTouchPE_x86.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set %guid1% device ramdisk=[boot]\boot\LiteTouchPE_x86.wim,{ramdiskoptions}

for /f “tokens=1-3” %%a in (‘Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /create /d “WinPE x64” /application osloader’) do set guid2=%%c
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set %guid2% systemroot \Windows
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set %guid2% detecthal Yes
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set %guid2% winpe Yes
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set %guid2% osdevice ramdisk=[boot]\boot\LiteTouchPE_x64.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set %guid2% device ramdisk=[boot]\boot\LiteTouchPE_x64.wim,{ramdiskoptions}

Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /create {bootmgr} /d “WinPE x86”
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set {bootmgr} timeout 30
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /set {bootmgr} displayorder %guid2% %guid1%
Bcdedit /store %BCD-File% /enum all

 

At this stage, you <%DeploymentShare%>\Boot folder should look like the following screenshot

 

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Install DNS,DHCP,WDS-Transport Roles on the MDT 2013 Server

Now; we are ready to configure additional roles and services on Windows 2008 R2 in order to make it work as a PXE/TFTP server in a standalone configuration for MDT 2013.

We will first install the Windows 2008 R2 roles that you are needed to meet our requirements.  We will be installing from the Powershell command line the following Roles :

• DNS Server
• DHCP Server
• WDS Server (only the WDS Transport Role component)

To perform the installation, Open your Powershell Console and issue the following command

import-module ServerManager

Add-WindowsFeature DNS,DHCP,WDS-TRansport -includeAllSubfeature 

 

This is it for this step. Note how easy it was while using the powershell cmdlet…

Configure the DHCP service for MDT 2013 Server

We will need to configure some options on our DHCP server. Some options might not be required but we still use them. To configure the DHCP, we are using a small batch file that will create the scope and specify some other options.  So, from a command prompt, run the following batch file (and modify it accordingly in order to reflect your infrastructure).

@echo off
Rem Basic batch file to quickly configure DHCP SCopes and Options
Rem Created by Griffon
Rem
REM *****************************************************************************
REM * MODIFY THIS SECTION AS REQUIRED
REM *
REM * BEFORE RUNNING THE SCRIPT, INSTALL DHCP SERVICE IF NOT ALREADY DONE !!
REM *
REM * ***************************************************************************
SET DHCPSCOPENAME=PXE
SET DHCPSCOPEDESC=”DHCP SCOPE PXE CLIENTS”
SET DHCPIPSCOPE=192.168.1.0
SET DHCPIPSUbnet=255.255.255.0
SET DHCPSCOPERANGE=192.168.1.200 192.168.1.250
SET TFTPIP=192.168.1.10
SET PXEBOOTFILENAME=pxeboot.n12

netsh dhcp server add scope %DHCPIPSCOPE% %DHCPIPSUbnet% %DHCPSCOPENAME% %DHCPSCOPEDESC%

netsh dhcp server scope %DHCPIPSCOPE% add iprange %DHCPSCOPERANGE%
netsh dhcp server scope %DHCPIPSCOPE% set optionvalue 066 String %TFTPIP%
netsh dhcp server scope %DHCPIPSCOPE% set optionvalue 067 String %PXEBOOTFILENAME%
net stop DHCP
net start DHCP
netsh dhcp server scope %DHCPIPSCOPE% set optionvalue 043 Binary 010400000000ff
netsh dhcp server add optiondef 60 PXEClient String 0 Comment=PXE Support
netsh dhcp server set optionvalue 60 String PXEClient

echo.
echo.

echo – CONFIGURATION COMPLETED !!
echo.
echo.

pause

Configure WDS service on the MDT 2013 Server

Why did we install the WDS Transport Role ? In Windows 2008 R2, the WDS transport component will provide the TFTP/PXE capabilities that MDT 2013 needs in order to deploy Operating Systems.  In order to have this TFTP/PXE functionalities, we will need to modify some the registry keys.

We will show you how you can perform the change through the Powershell console.  Open your Powershell console and copy/past the following code.

#Create WDS PRovider 
New-ItemProperty “HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WDSServer\Providers\WDSPXE” -Name “ProviderOrders” -Value “WDSSIPR” -PropertyType “MultiString”

 

#Allow DHCP 
set-ItemProperty “HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WDSServer\Providers\WDSPXE” -Name “UseDhcpPorts” -Value 0

 

#DEFINE TFTP ROOT  – Specify the Path of the Deployment Share you have created above
New-ItemProperty  “HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WDSServer\Providers\WDSTFTP” -Name “RootFolder” -Value <%Your Deployment Share Path%> -PropertyType “String”

 

Note : You will need to change the red part with your own value

Tell WDS where to find the boot winpe images

You will need to perform a final step in order to have your system configured properly.  You have to tell WDS where to find the bootable images you will be using.  To perform this configuration, simply perform the following actions

• Step 1 – On the WDS/DHCP/DNS Server,  open the file C:\Windows\system32\wdssipr.dll.conf.ini
• Step 2 – Locate this section (which should be empty in your configuration file)

• Step 3 – Save the file and you should be good to go

Start WDS Service and configure it for automatic startup

It’s time to start the WDS Transport component.  To do that, you will issue the following command in a command prompt (or Powershell Console)

WDSUTIL /Set-TransportServer /ObtainIPv4From:DHCP
WDSUTIL /Start-TransportServer

As a final step, we have configured the WDS Service to start automatically by issuing the following command

 Set-Service -Name WDSServer -StartupType Automatic

Final Notes

And Voila ! We have successfully setup a MDT 2013 server in a standalone configuration using the WDS-Transport component.  It’s time for you to test this configuration and see if this is working.  I like the fact that I can have a standalone configuration of MDT 2013 using only Microsoft Technologies…

I might publish a script (or the structure of script) that would automate this setup and configuration steps.

The good news is that with Windows 2012 R2, you can have a standalone WDS configuration which make it easier to combine the role with MDT 2013.  Finally, Microsoft listen to some of us and is providing a nice standalone deployment solution.

Till next time

See ya