Sometimes for availability purposes, it is necessary to ensure the MDT database is clustered to allow failover in case of a server failure or maintenance event. There are a few things that you want to keep in mind when you decide to do this: 1. The SQL...

Although this post is not strictly a deployment post, I felt it worthy because it offers some assistance for planning your Windows 7 deployments!   A great guide has been posted on TechNet recently that should really help with the Windows 7 deployment...

The MDT Task Sequences for System Center Configuration Manager 2007 use a clever technique to download and persist the MDT Files package during each phase of the Task Sequence. The Use Toolkit Package step uses the ZTISCCM.wsf script to copy the contents...

Update 2009-07-17: Corrected some errors in the application settings in the Extracting the Sysprep Files section that occured because I did not make all necessary changes after doing a copy/paste. Update 2009-12-29: Added MDT 2010 version of ZTIBackupCustom...

I recently did a project where all users had around 25Gb (don’t ask!) of data that had to be migrated with the USMT during the OS deployment. Because of the sheer volume of data, the USMT phases of the project took an extremely long time to complete,...

Or… How Not to Create Boolean Properties in an MDT Script 15 Feb 2010 Update – For information on using ConvertBooleanToString with MDT 2010, see the workarounds described in this post:  http://blogs.technet.com/deploymentguys/archive/2010/02/15...

Mike recently posted on how to take an MDT action based on group membership in Active Directory. At the same time, I was working on something quite similar but using a different approach, so I thought I’d blog it here to offer an alternative method to...

Monday, June 22, 2009 Update – Fellow Deployment Guy Daniel Oxley pointed out to me that this is much more useful if you can pass in an optional username and password. So I have modified the post and the script to allow that. Please note the changes in...

So as Windows 7 accelerates to being released to manufacture and we start to get involved in engagements to deploy it I thought I might take a quick look at some changes to BitLocker and how they might help or hinder deployments. One thing that customers...

Here is the second of my posts on BitLocker under Windows 7. While not strictly deployment focused I found these points of interest. We all tend to use USB disks for moving data around and securing these is becoming more important. For example how many...

On an internal discussion group, the question can up as to whether you could compile or encode a CMD script to prevent casual viewing of the code, similar to what the Script Encoder does for Windows Script Host scripts. So for fun I decided to see if...

23 Nov 2009 Update - TimeZoneLib.ps1 in the download has been updated to allow proper redirection of the script output to a file. A few year back a customer of mine was setting the time zone on their computers by directly modifying registry entries. ...

While this is not 100% MDT/Deployment focused I thought it of enough relevance to post here. I have attended the Virtual Round Tables that Mark has run in the past. I can say that, without exception, I have found them to be of high value and well worth...

A common requirement during user state migration is to not capture data from certain drives. The most commonly requested for exclusion are removable drives such as USB and FireWire drives. There is no command line option to exclude these drives automatically...

Update 28 April 2009 – This post originally had the sample scripts pinning the executable (calc.exe) directly. A colleague of mine pointed out that it would be better to pin the Start Menu shortcuts for items instead of directly pinning the executable...

An email managed to squeeze its way into my inbox over night announcing that the Application Compatibility Toolkit version 5.5 would be available for download on April 3rd (Redmond Time). This is the version that fully supports Windows 7 RC and Windows...

Michael Niehaus’ walkthrough/webcast of MDT 2010 Beta 2 is now available online as Michael indicates on his blog here: http://blogs.technet.com/mniehaus/archive/2009/04/01/mdt-2010-partner-webcast-recording-available.aspx You have to register to download...

My esteemed colleague - Doug Klokow who is a Senior Consultant in the worldwide deployment practice, working with Windows 7 TAP (Technical Adoption Program) customers in the US has put together a most useful set of instructions regarding Windows 7 deployment...

I was recently asked to share these files with a colleague, so I thought I would also share them with everyone via our blog. I developed them a while ago for a deployment project and I have since used them a few times more. Basically, they are 3 very...

When creating both x86 and x64 Windows PE images, provide both x86 and x64 version of any tools that will be used.  MDT 2008 provides a method to add additional file to the Windows PE image using the Extras folder which is configured on the Windows...

Following on from Aly’s excellent article about configuring MDT to support Boot from VHD I thought I would add some words about WDS and boot from VHD. Windows Server 2008 R2 contains an enhanced version of the WDS server. I will talk about some of the...

One of the more difficult scenarios that customers have found in the past is multi-booting a new OS. The effort needed to re-partition the drive to allow for the new OS is sometimes too great. One new solution that is gaining ground in deployment is Boot...

A big thank you to those of you that tested the original XSL for the TaskSequence documentor and provided feedback. This is v2 and includes some bug fixes: - Formats orphan steps with no Group - Added recursive template for Nested conditions for both...

The Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) is a set of tools and documentation that support the configuration and deployment of Microsoft® Windows® operating systems.. By using Windows AIK, you can automate Windows installations, capture Windows...

As I mentioned in the Windows XP Service Pack 3 Considerations section of my Full Update post on the Single Image process, that process will no longer be supported with Service Pack 3. While none of what I stated there has changed, there are now updates...