Adapting BDD 2007 for Server OS Deployment

Posted Tuesday, January 23, 2007 7:43 AM by jhuston

For the past year or more, we have been using the automation in BDD 2.5 to deploy our server operating systems.  This has been a great deployment tool for us and I'm looking forward to adapting BDD 2007 to this same purpose.

Deploying a server OS is very similar to a workstation OS, but is usually done with more interaction (such as the Lite-Touch scenario).  Because our environment encompasses several domains, I'm still interested in the SMS OSD automation component of the Zero-Touch scenario.  I'm attempting to mold the two together in a meaningful way.

As I learn more, I'll post some notes for how I've customized BDD 2007 for this purpose.  Perhaps the Microsoft folks will take a listen that many admins do not want to have multiple build, image, and deploy technologies but, instead, want a more unified approach to deploying all flavors of the operating systems available from Microsoft.

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Comments

# re: Adapting BDD 2007 for Server OS Deployment

Tuesday, January 23, 2007 3:58 PM by mniehaus

You'll be happy to know that we are already working on a new Windows Server Deployment Solution Accelerator.  This is due to be released at the same time as Longhorn Server.

In the meantime, there is support in BDD 2007 for deploying server OSes, added specifically for the reasoning you suggest: one set of tools, regardless of what Windows you want to deploy.  We didn't do much testing of this (lack of time), but it should work fine.

-Michael Niehaus

Systems Design Engineer

mniehaus@microsoft.com