Speaker: Johan Arwidmark @jarwidmark, Chief Technical Architect, Knowledge Factory
Agenda: hydration, create reference image, setup ConfigMgr 2012 for deployment.
Free hydration kit, based o n MDT 2012 Lite Touch, fully automated build of entre labs. Download from www.deploymentresearch.com When your run it, it allows you to copy your media into a folder structure. Then you get an easy deployment solution. It does an unattended install of ConfigMgr. It even installs a DC for your labs!
He’s enabled deduplication on his Windows Server 2012 MDT machine, saving a lot of disk space.
The kit creates a 10 GB ISO file, which you mount on a VM and start from. You are asked if you want the domain controller (1st) or the ConfigMgr site server (2nd). There is a customsettings.ini file for each server, with their build confgs, e.g. IP address.
Johan recommends Lite Touch to create ConfigMgr reference images. He reckons it’s twice as quick. Plus, a ConfigMgr reference image is specific to ConfigMgr, whereas an MDT one is generic and can be used in WDS, ImageX, etc.
Create a reference image
Doing this in MDT 2012 Workbench. Import OS image and create task sequence. Always use VMs for reference images. He puts a suspend in the task sequence so he can snapshot the VM before the sysprep. That means he can apply the snapshot to change the macine and recapture the reference image.