WDS is a server role in Windows Server (from 2008 to 2012), that enables us to deploy Windows operating systems to client and server computers. The technologies we must be aware of here are PXE (Pre eXecution Environment), Active Directory, DNS and also DHCP (for handling IP addressing).
Before we step into WDS in Server 2012, I will cover few topics that are helpful.
Imaging
You have a clean install of Windows OS, and if you take a snapshot of that and store it as a file is called Imaging. And this image file would have the whole OS installation inside it. And by imaging method we can use this single (can be customized) image to deploy to various other machines, reducing our time and maintenance to physically go to each computer and install the OS with the installation media. We get to touch the concept of imaging in our WDS tutorial.
PXE (Pre eXecution Environment)
Often pronounced as Pixie is used to boot an end computer from the network using only its network card.
An example of how this works this way:
- A domain network.
- A PXE server.
- A configured image or boot file for client/or/server deployments.
In the picture below, the PXE server, serves the purpose of pushing the boot image file to clients that are requesting for deployments.
Windows Deployment Services
WDS in Server 2012 is a role that allows us to deploy Windows OS to client and server computers. By using WDS, client computers without the OS can boot from the network, contact the WDS server, download and install the operating system. WDS uses images for the installation.
Deployment Steps:
The requirements for WDS is to have an Active Directory environment with the DNS Server. I mentioned in my DHCP setup tutorial that we need DHCP role as well for WDS to handle IP addressing for client deployments.
0 comments:
Post a Comment