Ben Hunter

The Last Post

2008-01-27T11:41:00Z

Well I am sad to say that this is my last post. But don't worry I have something better. I have been thinking for quite a while that there are so many different blogs out there with useful deployment information. This is great but it can be difficult to keep track of them all, there must be a better way. With this in mind myself and a number of other guys that have deployment related blogs have decided to combine our efforts into one blog called " The Deployment Guys ". But that is not all...(read more)

Microsoft Deployment - Released

2007-11-12T10:21:00Z

Well it looks like I no longer have to answer the question "when will Microsoft Deployment be released?" with the response "sometime soon :)". Microsoft Deployment is now released!! I wont go into all the details of what MDT does, you will find that information in many blogs (including my previous and future posts) and within the MDT documentation itself. Instead I would simply congratulate the development team for producing a worthy successor to BDD. If you want to download MDT then you...(read more)

BDD 2007 - TechNet Magazine article worth reading

2007-10-28T12:22:00Z

One of my fellow Microsoft Services consultants from the UK Adam Shepherd, has just had an article published in TechNet Magazine. The article provides advice on how to scale BDD. This includes how to to support multiple databases, use DFS-R and how to leverage WDS. The advice is based on learning's from real world so you should find it practical. If nothing else it should help you further understand just how flexible BDD really is. So go out there and read this article and remember to keep...(read more)

BDD is now Microsoft Deployment

2007-10-25T10:55:00Z

The big secret is now out! BDD has officially had a name change, the next version will be called Microsoft Deployment. I was hoping the new name would be "the solution accelerator formerly known as BDD" but I don't think that even made it to first cut because the acronym would have been too long (TSAFKABDD). I think it is fairly obvious that now the server and desktop deployment tools had been unified into one solution accelerator that it needed a a more appropriate name. So start making...(read more)

BDD 2007 - How to create a Custom task sequence with reboots

2007-10-09T21:44:00Z

I am often asked how to setup a custom task sequence that will continue after a reboot. If you have created a custom task sequence to install a number of applications that includes a reboot then you will know the problem I am taking about. When you do this you will find that the computer will reboot and then return to the logon prompt. The computer does not automatically logon :(. So you logon manually and BDD does not continue, so you have to manually launch the litetouch.wsf script :(. Then...(read more)

BDD 2007 -How to ensure the computer is in the correct OU

2007-10-07T12:25:00Z

As promised in a previous blog post here is a script to move a computer to the correct OU from within the host operating system. There are two situations where I find this script useful: When a computer object already exists in Active Directory for the computer you are deploying. In this situation the existing computer object will be reused and the computer will remain in the original computer objects OU. When you are using a Staging OU during deployment. In this situation the computer...(read more)

Deployment 4 - UPDATE - How to create a custom task sequence

2007-09-26T23:16:00Z

I have previously mentioned how to create a custom task sequence to save time when testing application installation in BDD 2007. You will find the article here . There are two problems you could run into when using this process with Deployment 4. If you create a custom task sequence based on a REPLACE template then it fails saying it cannot find \distribution$\control\ts.xml If you use a different template then I get an error saying you haven’t specified a deploymenttype value. ...(read more)

BDD 2007 - How do you do it?

2007-09-20T23:21:00Z

I am often asked how I install and configure BDD 2007. So I thought now was a good time to detail at a high level the process I go through to create and deploy operating system images using BDD 2007. This is not a step by step guide but more of a rant about how I do BDD and the reasons why. The first thing I must say is that this is just my way of doing installing BDD. And I am sure that there are many people using BDD in different ways, which may well be better than mine. BDD is a very flexible...(read more)

BDD 2007 - Special characters special problems

2007-09-20T02:07:00Z

Here is a simple tip when using BDD. DO NOT use special characters anywhere. They cause problems. Let's illustrate this with an example. I create an application with the name "AT&T Dialer". Then when I add this application to the task sequence I see that it is now displayed as "INSTALL-ATT Dialer". You can also have problems when you use special characters in your password. This causes issues when BDD tries to save the password to the unattend.xml file, causing the build to fail. ...(read more)

Deployment 4 – Who stole my build?

2007-09-19T02:42:00Z

Well for those of you that have already installed Deployment 4 may have notice that Deployment 4 does not use builds anymore. Task sequences are used instead. Task sequences are very similar to builds with a few subtle changes. All of the task sequence configuration information is now maintained within the task sequence itself, NOT in the general and settings tabs settings tab. So let’s compare builds and task sequences. The screen shots below are from a BDD 2007 build. So where exactly...(read more)