Windows Deployment Services in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is the updated and redesigned version of Remote Installation Services (RIS), which was first introduced in Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. You can use Windows Deployment Services to rapidly deploy the Windows 7 operating system by using Pre- Boot Execution Environment (PXE).
Using Windows Deployment Services, you can deploy Windows 7 over a network. You can also use Windows Deployment Services to start remote computers using Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) boot images and then install Windows 7 using customized, scripted deployment solutions, such as Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 (MDT 2010).
Windows Deployment Services delivers a better in-box deployment solution than RIS. It provides platform features that allow for custom solutions, including remote boot capabilities; a plug-in model for PXE server extensibility; and a client-server communication protocol for diagnostics, logging, and image enumeration.
Also, Windows Deployment Services uses the Windows Imaging (.wim) file format and provides a greatly improved management experience through the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and scriptable command-line tools. For organizations that already have a RIS implementation deployed, Windows Deployment Services maintains parity with RIS by providing both coexistence and migration paths for RIS.
First, Windows Deployment Services continues to support RIS images in legacy or mixed mode. Second, Windows Deployment Services provides tools to migrate RIS images to the .wim file format.
this article describes the architecture of Windows Deployment Services and the requirements for using it. It also describes the key features of Windows Deployment Services and how to use them in specific scenarios, including how MDT 2010 uses Windows Deployment Services to start destination computers and install operating systems. Finally, the article describes the improvements to Windows Deployment Services introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2.
Introducing Windows Deployment Services
Windows Deployment Services supports remote, on-demand deployment of Windows 7 and Windows PE images located in a central image store. It is available as an add-on to Windows Server 2003 systems running RIS and is the native remote installation technology provided with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
Windows Deployment Services images are collected from client master systems and stored using the single instancing provided by the .wim imaging format. Clients can be booted from PXE-compliant network adapters or by using remote client boot disks. The Windows Deployment
Services client boots into a customized Windows PE image, and the user can select the installation image from a list of images stored on the server. Windows Deployment Services installations can also be scripted for unattended installation support and to support Lite Touch Installation (LTI) and Zero Touch Installation (ZTI) scenarios.
Service Architecture
The Windows Deployment Services architecture has three major categories of features: Management features Management features are a set of tools that you use to manage the server, operating system images, and client computer accounts. The Windows Deployment Services MMC snap-in is a management feature, and the command-line interface is another
Server features Server features include a PXE server for network booting a client to load and install an operating system. Server features also include a shared folder and image repository that contains boot images, installation images, a Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) server, a multicast server, a driver provisioning server, and files that you need specifically for network boot.
Client features Client features include a graphical user interface (GUI) that runs within Windows PE and communicates with the server features to select and install an operating system
Organizing images into groups, provides two benefits. First, image groups allow you to better manage and organize images. For example, you can manage the security of an entire image group rather than managing the security of individual images. Second, image groups provide units of single instancing.
This means that all the images within an image group use Single Instance Storage (SIS) to significantly compress their contents. The file Res.rwm contains all of the file resources for the image group, and this file uses SIS. Each image file contains only metadata that describes the image file contents based on the contents of Res.rwm.
Windows Deployment Services references images by their group name and image file name. For example, the image ImageGroup1\Install2.wim refers to the image file Install2.wim in the group ImageGroup1.
Source : http://www.web-articles.info/e/a/title/Configuring-Windows-Deployment-Services/
