Fully-Automated Installation Design Tasks

Fully-Automated Installation Design Tasks

When designing a fully automated installation, your primary tasks involve choosing the following:

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; The operating system image to configure in the CIW for automated clients.

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; The client computers that receive the fully automated installation configuration.

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; The configurations for RIS Group Policy options.

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; The boot configuration of client computers.

For a job aid to record your design decisions for a fully-automated installation, see "Designing the RIS Deployment Mode and CIW Process" (ACIRIS_08.doc) on the Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit companion CD (or see "Designing the RIS Deployment Mode and CIW Process" on the Web at https://www.microsoft.com/reskit).

Defining the Operating System Image

If you want to fully automate the operating system image installation process, it makes sense to provide only one operating system installation option to clients that receive the automated installation. When there is only one operating system image that users are configured to receive, that image is selected automatically and the CIW does not display the operating system choices screen.

For an automated installation, you make a single image available to select users or user groups the same way you make multiple images available for interactive installations: by configuring permissions on answer files and the operating system image folder on your RIS server.

For example, you might have a user group with users that all require an automated installation of a common operating system. For this group, you create an answer file and associate it with a single operating system image. You then set Read permissions on the answer file and image folder to allow each user in the group to receive installation of the operating system.

For this part of your automated installation design process, use the "Operating System Installation Access" section of job aid "Designing the RIS Deployment Mode and CIW Process" (ACIRIS_08.doc) on the Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit companion CD (or see "Designing the RIS Deployment Mode and CIW Process" on the Web at https://www.microsoft.com/reskit) to record the operating system image and the user groups that you want to receive it. Also, record the name of the applicable answer file that gives the user group permission to access the operating system image.

You might want to defer recording this information until you design the CIW process. For more information about defining and configuring CIW operating system installation options, see "Interactive Installation Design Tasks" earlier in this chapter.

Choosing Clients for Automated Installation

To provide an automated installation to all clients that contact a RIS server, you can rename the Startrom.n12 file in the \Remoteinstall\OSChooser\i386\ folder on your RIS server to Startrom.com. However, this method does not apply to RIS referral servers since these servers only provide clients with referrals to other RIS servers, which in turn supply the appropriate boot files. For more information about RIS referral servers see "RIS Server Configuration Design Tasks" later in this chapter.

For example, you might have a particular group of clients, configured to be serviced by a single RIS server, for which you want to provide automated installations. In this situation, renaming the Startrom.n12 file to Startrom.com is the best solution.

If you need to configure only certain clients for automated installations, you must explicitly specify which clients receive Startrom.n12 and which clients receive Startrom.com. You can only do this if you prestage clients in Active Directory and specify the startup files for each prestaged computer account as part of the input file to the prestaging script. This way, you can provide an automated installation to any client serviced by any RIS server that is configured to respond to known clients. To find the prestaging script, see the Remote Installation Scripts link on the Web Resources page http /www.microsoft.com/windows/reskits/webresources.).

For this part of your automated installation design process, use the "Automated Installations" section of job aid "Designing the RIS Deployment Mode and CIW Process" (ACIRIS_08.doc) on the Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit companion CD (or see "Designing the RIS Deployment Mode and CIW Process" on the Web at https://www.microsoft.com/reskit) to record the following information:

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; The RIS server name.

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; The default startup file configuration you intend to use on your RIS server.

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; Whether you prestage clients and specify startup files.

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; The users or groups you want to receive an automated installation.

Defining the Group Policy Configuration

When providing automated installations, you want users to be able to start their computers, log on, and initiate the installation process without providing any further input. To assure that this occurs, you can configure the RIS-related Group Policy options so that clients receive an installation based on the Automatic Setup option. This means that clients do not have to specify a computer account name and an Active Directory location during the CIW process. This option works well for clients that have prestaged computer accounts in Active Directory and for non-prestaged clients that receive a computer account name and location based on preconfigured RIS server settings.

It does not matter if you prestage by creating computer accounts from the Active Directory extension on your RIS server, or if you prestage by using the prestaging script. In either case, you can configure these clients with the Automatic Setup option to support automated installations. However, when prestaging from the Active Directory extension, you are limited to providing automated installations to all clients configured to be serviced by the RIS server, because the extension does not provide any options for specifying the startup file.

The approach that gives you the most flexibility is to prestage clients by using the prestaging script, specify the startup file each client uses, and set the Group Policy option to Automatic Setup. You can create as many Group Policy objects as you need to configure the user groups that will receive an automated installation.

For example, you might design a fully-automated installation that requires implementing a process such as the following:

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; Create a Group Policy object and set the Automatic Setup option.

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; Apply the Group Policy to a particular user group for which you want automated installations to occur.

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; Prestage computer accounts for the users in that group and specify the use of Startrom.n12 file for those users.

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; Create an answer file for the group and configure permissions to view a single operating system image.

For this part of your automated installation design process, use the "Group Policy Configuration" section of job aid "Designing the RIS Deployment Mode and CIW Process" (ACIRIS_08.doc) on the Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit companion CD (or see "Designing the RIS Deployment Mode and CIW Process" on the Web at https://www.microsoft.com/reskit) to record the Group Policy name, Group Policy configuration, and the user group(s) to which it applies.

You might want to defer recording this information until you design the CIW process. For more information about configuring Group Policy setup options in the CIW, see "CIW Design Tasks" later in this chapter.

Defining the Boot Configuration

To ensure that your automated installations function as expected, you need to define the proper boot configuration by making the appropriate choices:

Choose which method you intend to use for the startup file configuration:

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; Change the names of the startup files on a RIS server to enable all clients serviced by the RIS server to perform a remote network boot of an automated installation.

·   &nb 10110i819k sp;   &nb 10110i819k sp; Prestage automated installation clients in Active Directory and configure startup files for each client.

You might have already recorded these parameters in job aid "Designing the RIS Deployment Mode and CIW Process" (ACIRIS_08.doc) on the Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit companion CD (or see "Designing the RIS Deployment Mode and CIW Process" on the Web at https://www.microsoft.com/reskit) when reviewing the "Choosing Clients for Automated Installation" section, earlier in this chapter. If not, record them now.

Choose the client computers on which to configure the appropriate BIOS boot sequence. For automated installations, you must set the boot sequence to use the hard disk as the first boot device and the network adapter (or the floppy disk drive in the case of non-PXE enabled clients) as the second device.

Choose the client computers for which you must disable all active partitions on the boot drive, using the Microsoft Diskpart.exe tool.

For this part of your automated installation design process, use the "Automated Installations" section of job aid "Designing the RIS Deployment Mode and CIW Process" (ACIRIS_08.doc) to record the BIOS boot sequence you define for specific clients.