Scale your Vista deployment plan with imaging tools

by Deb Shinder | Nov 02, 2006 8:00:00 AM

Tags: Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Operating systems, tool, Deb Shinder, Microsoft Corp., Windows PE, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Vista, System Image Manager, imaging, SMB Strategies Newsletter

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Takeaway: Deploying a new operating system presents more and more challenges as your organization grows. When it comes to deploying Windows Vista, there are a slew of free tools to help you get the job done.

There are many IT tasks that get more complex and time consuming as your organization grows. One of those is deploying a new operating system. In anticipation of the release of its latest client OS, Microsoft has created a set of tools to help IT professionals in the enterprise environment more easily install Windows Vista onto new hardware.

Image-based deployment using third party tools such as Norton Ghost has been popular for years. Windows 2000 introduced Remote Installation Services (RIS) for centralized server-based installation of Windows 2000 Professional. The Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) was made available to volume licensing/software assurance customers for deploying Windows XP.

Microsoft goes a step further with Vista. You can find a whole suite of deployment tools in the Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 download, currently available to beta testers through Microsoft Connect.

Why Vista deployment is different

Traditionally, even image-based deployment could be time consuming and effort-intensive because separate images had to be created for new hardware, language packs and updates. Vista uses an image file format�WIM--that is not dependent on the hardware, so you don't have to have different images for different hardware configurations. It�s a file-based imaging format (as opposed to sector-based imaging formats such as ISO). You can even have multiple images contained in a single file. WIM uses compression and "single instancing"--which refers to maintaining only one copy of each file--to accomplish relatively small file sizes. So you don�t need to make as many images as with previous methods, and the images you do make require less storage space.

In addition, the answer files that Vista uses to provide user-entered information during an unattended installation are in XML format instead of text. This allows for faster and more accurate installations.

Using the tools

The BDD 2007 download includes the following tools:

Windows PE 2.0
System Image Manager (SIM)
ImageX

You can use them to make deployment in a large scale environment much easier.

Windows PE 2.0

Unlike Windows PE for XP, Windows PE 2.0 for Vista will be made available to all corporate customers--not just those with software assurance agreements. Windows PE is actually a stripped down version of the Vista operating system, which is small enough to boot from a CD (typically less than 100MB) and run completely in RAM. It includes only the services necessary to run Windows setup, script tasks, etc. The PE interface is a command line window on top of the Vista splash screen background.

Windows PE can be used for many of the same purposes you previously used a bootable MS-DOS disk. You can create and format NTFS partitions, access network shares and customize the operating system with device drivers for your particular hardware.� Because it contains APIs and a powerful command interpreter, you can use languages such as JavaScript and Visual Basic to create scripts.

Note that Windows PE is intended as a deployment and troubleshooting platform, not to be used as a full fledged OS. Thus is automatically reboots 24 hours after starting, and the server service is not available, nor does it support Windows on Windows (WOW) or the .NET framework.

System Image Manager (SIM)

You use the SIM tool to make answer files for unattended installations. SIM provides an easy to use graphical interface and saves the files in XML instead of text format. You use SIM to point to distribution shares (the folders containing the drivers and applications you want to install), view the contents of WIM image files and view how the answer file has been edited. The answer file is monitored as you edit it and the tool lets you know if it detects configuration or XML problems. These alerts show up in the Messages screen. There is also a Properties screen where you can view information about installation packages you�ve selected to install.

ImageX

This is the disk imaging tool that you use to create and edit WIM images. You can mount the image files as folders and edit them offline. It�s a command line tool that you can run from the command prompt or within Windows PE. This makes it easy to script. You can capture a volume to a WIM file, then apply the WIM file to a volume. You can also append a volume image to an existing WIM, as you can have multiple images in one WIM file. You can export an image from one WIM file to another, or split an existing WIM file into multiple (read only) files. And you can mount an image to a folder, make changes to it and then unmount it (for example, to add device drivers to the image).

Summary

Deployment of new operating systems to multiple computers becomes much more scalable when you have the right tools to get the job done. With Windows Vista, Microsoft provides you with a toolbox full of utilities that will help you to do mass image-based installations without purchasing third party tools. Using Windows PE 2.0, the System Image Manager (SIM) and ImageX--all of which are included in the Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 download, you can easily create and implement a deployment strategy that won�t drive administrators crazy in the process.

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