Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Lite Touch Providing a Wizard To Select The Deployment Share
There is actually a little known built-in feature for prompting you with a wizard screen to select the Deployment Share you want to connect to. There is actually a built in pane in the main deployment wizard that will only show up if you haven’t specified a DeployRoot value in bootstrap.ini
By default, if you don’t provide a DeployRoot value, then the wizard will pop up and allow you to manually specify the server location.
If you create a LocationServer.xml and put that on your boot image, then the wizard will display a drown down list of the Deployment Shares you have configured in the xml file. Here is a screenshot example.
You can see that I have 2 Deployment Shares to choose from in the drop down:
The tricky part that isn’t documented well is the LocationServer.xml file and what to do with it. Here is the correct format for the xml file as per the MDT documentation.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<servers>
<QueryDefault></QueryDefault>
<server>
<serverid>1</serverid>
<friendlyname>
Deployment San Antonio
</friendlyname>
<UNCPath>\\TX-Server\DeploymentShare$</UNCPath>
</server>
<server>
<serverid>2</serverid>
<friendlyname>
Deployment Madison
</friendlyname>
<UNCPath>\\WI-Server\DeploymentShare$</UNCPath>
</server>
</servers>
This file needs to be added to the boot image. The easiest and most flexible way of doing this is by using an “Extrafiles” directory. The files added to this directory will be automatically added to the boot images when they are created or updated. This is the same method you would typically use for adding something like Trace32 to your 32-bit boot image.
I typically create an Extrafiles directory in the root of the DeploymentShare, so:
DeploymentShare\Extrafiles
Then we need to add a Deploy\Control folder structure:
DeploymentShare\Extrafiles\Deploy\Control
The LocationServer.xml needs to be in this Control folder.
Next we need to configure our boot images to use this Extrafiles directory. Go to the Windows PE x86 (or x64) Settings tab under your DeploymentShare properties:
Next configure the path for the Extrafiles directory you created.
Next we need to configure bootstrap.ini to allow the wizard to come up. Edit your bootstrap.ini:
You need to either remove or comment out your DeployRoot path that you have:
Next, update your DeploymentShare to rebuild your boot images.
Next you can launch your boot media through PXE (remember to update the WDS boot images), CD/DVD, or a USB thumb drive.
We have our Deployment Shares to choose from.
Once you select a share, you will be prompted for credentials to connect to that share.
After providing valid credentials, we see our Task Sequences to choose from.
If we had chosen the other Deployment Share, then we would have only see the following Task Sequences available to us.
That’s it! Hope you find this information useful.