In the RemoteInstall folder, there are multiple files for different machine and deployment scenarios:

The files perform the following functions:

PXEboot.com – x86 and x64 BIOS: Requires the end-user to press F12 for PXE boot to continue (this is the default NBP).

PXEboot.n12 – x86 and x64 BIOS: Immediately begins PXE boot (doesn’t require pressing F12 on the client).

AbortPXE.com – x86 and x64 BIOS: Allows the device to immediately begin booting by using the next boot device specified in the BIOS. This allows for devices that should not be booting using PXE to immediately begin their secondary boot process without waiting for a timeout.

Bootmgfw.efi – x64 UEFI and IA64 UEFI: The EFI version of PXEboot.com or PXEboot.n12 (in EFI, the choice of whether or not to PXE boot is handled within the EFI shell and not by the NBP). Bootmgfw.efi is the equivalent of combining the functionality of PXEboot.com, PXEboot.n12, abortpxe.com and bootmgr.exe.

wdsnbp.com – x86 and x64 BIOS: A special NBP developed for use by Windows Deployment Services that serves the following general purposes:
◦Architecture detection
◦Pending devices scenarios

Wdsmgfw.efi – x64 UEFI and IA64 UEFI: A special NBP developed for use by Windows Deployment Services that serves the following general purposes:
◦Handles prompting the user to press a key to continue PXE boot
◦Pending devices scenarios

Lab Reflection:

 

  • Host configuration: In the VB manager choose the host, click “settings”, choose “system”, then pull the network boot in the “boot order” to the top. Choose “Network”, Choose “Internal Network” in the “attached to” option.
  • Server configuration ( finish the configuration on the text book first):
    1. Make sure server has at least 1 install image, 1 boot image.
    2. Make sure The “windows management instrumentation” (ASync-In, DCOM-In, WMI-in, allow remote access in the scope) are enabled. These can be configured in Windows Firewall with Advanced Security Settings.
    3. Change DNS permissions: Make sure have at least one AD DS user and computer, if not, you can add user in “Active Directory Users and Computers” console, user option under the domain. We will use this to login to server later.  Add Group and computer:
    4. DHCP Role configure:
      If running Windows Deployment Services and DHCP on the same computer,go to WDS console, expand “Servers”,right click the domain name(eg: DC1.frankfu.com),choose “Properties”, on DHCP tab,check”do not listen on port 67″ and “configure DHCP option 60 to “PXEClient”.
      Then go to DHCP console,expand domain name, IPv4,right click Scope[****],properties, Advanced tab, choose”Assign IP addresses dynamically to clients of ” to “Both“.
      Right click Server Options, configure options.Scroll down to option 66, check it, enter the WDS server IP address(192.168.1.11 in this example)
      click option 67, string value: For 32-bit clients use” boot\x86\pxeboot.com”; for 64-bit clients use “boot\x64\pxeboot.com”.
    5. Make sure DHCP, DNS, WDS all running, then fire on the client VM, you will see a Prompt ask you to press F12 to boot from network. After that, you can see the reading image progress bar from the ip address. ( 192.168.1.11 in this example).After choosing Locale and Keyboard, you will need to login to AD DS, we created this in step2, Remember to input both user name and domain name,like [email protected]. After this, other steps like local installation.
    6. Optional configuration:
      • To perform network boot without F12:Click Start, right-click Command Prompt, and click Run as administrator.Run one of the following:.
        • Windows Server 2008: WDSUTIL /Set-Server /AllowN12ForNewClients:Yes
        • Windows Server 2008 R2: WDSUTIL /Set-Server /PxePromptPolicy /New:NoPrompt
      • Use KMS: Create an SRV record in DNS: expand the “Forward lookup zones”, right click the zone name ( the one without _msdcs prifix). select “other New records”, then choose”Service Location(SRV)”, click “create record”, in the “NEw Resource Record” dialog input following: Service: _VLMCS; Protocol: _TCP; Priority:0; weight:0;portnumber:1688; Host offering the service: FQDN of KMS host.
      • For KMS, we need to install WAIK. In this example, we use manual, so don’t need install.
    7. Scripts: I input the Locale, keyboard,Authentication info, OS type, Language, PC name in this lab, I will try to figure out a script to achieve automatic installation.
    8. Know issues (IPv6 is not supported on windows 2008):
      Add DHCP options 66 and 67. Option 66 should be set to the Windows Deployment Services server, and option 67 should be set to boot\x86\wdsnbp.com.
Other platform

On the linux, we can use FOG Project to complete the deployment job, which is open source. The advantage of FOG over WDS is that the FOG can support multiple boot and image is highly compressed. And of courese, it’s completely free, we can even modify the FOG source code if you like.

Then I decided to chose FOG project and tried it on Fedora in a virtual-box environment to deploy OS.

      The procedures are:
  • The fedora DHCP is not that easily to use as the Windows 2008 one, so I built up a small network which consist of 1 Fedora 13 server, 1 windows 2008 server, 1 windows7. I planed to use 2 windows7 as clients, but it turned out to be too slow to run 4 virtual machines in my laptop, then I just simplified the topology. 
  • Before installation: update the Fedora, disable selinux, firewall.  Then the problem comes, the installation needs static IP address on Fedora while needs Internet connection as well. If I use NAT connection on virtual box, the address can’t be static, installation might fail. So I tried the bridged adaptor on virtual machine ,  use DHCP in Fedora server , and I have Internet connection. Then used “Ifconfig” to check the IP address, wrote them down. Afterwards, statically assigned the same IP address to the machine, and I still have internet connection!
  • After installation: Change the “bridged adaptor” to “internal” on virtual machine for fedora, windows 2008 and win7.
    • Configure the DHCP server option on Win2k8: option 66: 192.168.1.12 which is the static IP address of my FOG server;
    • option 67: undionly.kpxe which is the tftp bootfile name.  
    • Open the webpage on Fedora: 192.168.1.12/fog/management, log on with default username:fog; password:password.
  • Configure the FOG server: First, create a image in the image option. Keep in mind that choose the “multipartition,single disk” for the image type no matter how many partition you made manually (win7 has system reserved partition) . Secondly, boot the Win7 machine and we will see the fog menu, choose to register and it will reboot, turn off the client machine. Now we can pull and push image to the host machine.
    fedora FOG 2 FogPush Image