This is the second instalment documenting my adventures with deploying a Windows 7 SOE.
In this post I’m going to lay out how I’ve built my development environment and get our source image machine booted. I built this environment from scratch in VMware Workstation so that it remains clean, portable and independent of any other infrastructure in my other labs.
Each time you see a mention of a file in this post it should be a hyperlink to the file. I should mention that some of my config is locale centric and may make some other assumptions that are not relevant to your environment.
If anything in this post isn’t clear, or is wrong please let me know in the comments!
Note: I take no responsibility for this stuff destroying your kit, your data or your life. I run this all in a separate virtual lab and so should you. You really should read all the files before you run them.
My Hardware
I run this entire lab on my Dell Latitude E6500. I store all the VMs on an external 500GB powered E-SATA hard drive.
I have a USB network interface so that I can have two wired connections to my laptop, one for this lab and one for the laptop’s own OS to use.
Install VMware Workstation 7.1
The only significant thing you need to do with the VMware is to open the VMware Virtual Network Editor remove the lab LAN physical NIC from the default bridge and bridge it to VMnet3. Remove TCP/IP protocols from the physical NIC in the lab host so that it can’t see the lab LAN.
Build the Server
This is a VM running Windows Server 2008R2.
Its virtual hardware should be configured as such-
1. Two network interfaces
2. 2GB of RAM
3. 50GB C: and 150GB E:
4. The virtual CD-ROM is D:
5. Name the machine “buildsvr”.
One interface connected to the NAT network (VMnet8) and configures to use DHCP and the other interface bridged to the host NIC that connects to your lab LAN (VMnet3) with a fixed IP.
I used 192.168.14.1/24 as my build LAN.
Set the administrator password to “BuildAdmin01”. Set the password to never expire.
Then install the following additional services and settings-
a. Active Directory (buildlab.local)
b. DNS
c. DHCP Server (use a private subnet that you don’t use elsewhere and make the build server the gateway and DNS server). Bind it to the build LAN.
d. Create an account “deploy” with the password “Deploy1234”. Set the password to never expire
e. Install RRAS and configure it to NAT connections from the LAB LAN to the interface that connects to the host NAT network. This will allow machines in the LAB to get to the internet to install Windows Updates.
f. Configure DNS on buildsvr so that it will resolve queries for internet names.
g. Install the Windows 7 AIK
h. Create a ‘deploy’ on E: (the 150GB disk) and share it as ‘deploy’. Edit the permissions so that Users have Modify access to the folder and R/W on the share.
Note: the ‘e:\deploy’ folder and share is the home for everything else we’re going to do. All the files provided should be put in there. At the end of this series I’ll put up a Zip file of the basic structure so that you can just extract it into Deploy and get a good framework to start with. I’m not doing this now as some of these files are currently specialised for my employer and I’m editing and posting them as I go at this stage.
Prepare the Images
1. Insert the Windows 7 Enterprise x86 source media into D:, either by mounting an ISO or patching the physical drive through to the VM.
2. Open the “Deployment Tools Command Prompt” (this is part of the AIK)
Note: The next few scripts call DISM which will mount some files and make some changes. This will fail if any files are open in the mounts. Explorer has a tendency to index the folders if you have any folders open so you should close any Explorer windows before you run these scripts from the Deployment Tools Command Prompt.
i. Run “01 copy ms wims and inject pe drivers.bat” – there is no error handling, check the output thoroughly. Read the batch file for details.
ii. This copies the Boot and Install WIMs from the DVD and injects the Dell PE driver bundle into them. Note the the Boot.wim has two partitions.
iii. We will use these WIMs to deploy our initial copy of Windows using WDS.
iv. Run “02 make WDS PE image.cmd” – there is no error handling, check the output thoroughly. Read the batch file for details.
v. This calls copype.cmd (which is part of the AIK) to copy the WinPE image from the AIK folders into a working folder and then mounts the resulting WIM and injects the drivers and some extra PE packages. We will use this PE to capture and deploy our image.
Note: The only reason to inject the drivers at this stage is to do source installations to newer Dell hardware directly. The virtual machine boots using the drivers that Microsoft ships with Windows 7. The Dell PE drivers have also been sufficient for any HP models I’ve seen so far.
Install WDS
1. Set the Remote Install folder to E:\RemoteInstall
2. Use the Windows 7 DVD images for the initial images
3. Open the WDS console
4. Add a boot image “E:\deploy\Win7 x86 Ent DVD\boot.wim” with the name and description “Microsoft Windows Setup (x86) w. Dell Drivers”
5. Add a boot image “E:\wds_winpe_x86\winpe.wim” with the name and description “Microsoft Windows PE (x86) w. Dell Drivers”
6. Add an Install image “E:\deploy\Win7 x86 Ent DVD\install.wim” with the name and description “Windows 7 ENTERPRISE w. Dell Drivers”
7. Select Properties on “Windows 7 ENTERPRISE w. Dell Drivers” and set the unattended install file to “e:\deploy\ImageUnattend.xml” and close the dialog
8. Copy “E:\deploy\WDSUnattend.xml” to “E:\RemoteInstall\WDSUnattend.xml”
9. Select the properties of the WDS server, click on the Client tab and tick “Enable unattended installation” click brows and select “E:\RemoteInstall\WDSUnattend.xml”
10. Tick the “Do not join domain” box and close the dialog
11. Close the WDS console
Wait up, what’s in those XMLs?
The two XML files mentioned above are pretty basic and it should be fairly obvious what they do.
To edit the files you should use the Windows System Image Manager that’s part of the AIK rather than just opening them in notepad. To get a better understanding of what the various sections of the XML mean you can just have a bit of a Bingle around the internet- but the Microsoft documentation I’ve already linked to above is quite good.
WDSUnattend.xml only configures the initial Windows PE environment and the execution of Setup.exe within that environment.
ImageUnattend.xml configures the deployment itself. Other than setting the locale and other options required for a hands-free installation it configured the machine to pull down any .Inf drivers from a share and boot into Audit Mode. Once in audit mode it runs auditbatch.bat. auditbatch.bat maps Z: back to the deployment folder ready for you to run any other scripts you need to customise your source machine.
Reminder: Please edit the files to suit your environment, or at least be familiar with the assumptions my files are making for the installation.
Create the Source machine and boot it into it
1. Create a new VM (2GB/40GB) and connect it to the lab LAN (VMnet3).
2. Power on, hit F12 and boot from the network adaptor. Select “Microsoft Windows Setup (x86) w. Dell Drivers”
3. The image is installed to the VM without user interaction
4. The unattend files configure Windows Setup to perform the following actions –
- Pull down all the drivers from “\\bcebuildsvr\deploy\image drivers”
- Boot into Audit Mode
- Execute \\buildsvr\deploy\audit.bat which maps Z: to \\buildsvr\deploy
5. Once setup is complete you will be automatically logged into Audit Mode as the Administrator using the default profile. Any changes you make in Audit mode will affect the profile of all new users created on the machine after it is deployed.
What's next?
In the next post I’ll be showing you how to install apps into the source machine, capture it, inject additional drivers into the image and finally how to deploy that image so that Windows RE can make the deployment resilient.
