In part 2 of this series, you will be creating a second virtual machine which will be used to install and configure MDT for deploying Windows and applications. I’ll dive right into creating a virtual machine for your MDT server, which will be very much the same as creating the virtual machine for your domain controller in part 1.
Create a Virtual Machine for your MDT server
In the Hyper-V Manager, click Action > New > New Virtual Machine to bring up the New Virtual Machine wizard. On the first page, give the new VM a name that will show up in the Hyper-V console (I chose “MDT”), and click the “Next” button:
Next, give the virtual machine some RAM – I chose 2GB – then click the “Next” button:
Attach the VM to the network you created earlier from the drop-down list (you can see my “Internal” network chosen here), and then click the “Next” button:
Choose to “Attach a virtual hard disk later”, and click the “Finish” button (clicking “Next” will give you a summary, where you will then click “Finish”):
You should now see your newly-created virtual machine in the Hyper-V Manager:
With your VM highlighted, click Action > Settings to bring up the VM settings window. Click “Processor” and change the number of logical processors to “2”, and then click “IDE Controller 0”:
Select “Hard Drive” in the right-hand pane, and click the “Add” button to bring up the New hard drive window:
Click the “New” button, select “Differencing”, and click the “Next” button:
Give the new VHD a file name (I called it “MDT.vhd” here), and click the “Next” button:
Point the wizard at your “parent” VHD (either the trial VHD you downloaded and extracted from the hyperlink I gave in Part 1, or another sysprep-ed VHD you may already have) and click the “Finish” button:
You should now have your MDT virtual machine configured with a new hard disk and 2 processors, as seen below. Click the “OK” button to finish and return to the Hyper-V Manager:
Configure the Virtual Machine to be your MDT server
Double-click the new MDT virtual machine you see in Hyper-V Manager to open it in the Virtual Machine Connection viewer, and click the green “Start button” (or Action > Start) to start the virtual machine. If everything went well, it should boot up and complete the end of setup (installing devices, etc). During this setup phase, you may be asked to enter a product key (don’t, just click the “Skip” button) and agree to a EULA license (do):
If something is wrong here, go back and retrace your steps to make sure you haven’t missed anything. If you are using the downloaded VHD from Microsoft, this step may not be necessary. This is normal if it boots directly into Windows.
Once the machine does finish setup and boots for the first time (if you have downloaded and are using the trial VHD from Microsoft, the administrator password is Pass@word1), you can login with the Administrator account and begin readying it to handle MDT and deployment duties:
In the Initial Configuration Tasks window that will open once you log in, click the “Provide computer name and domain” link, and then click the “Change” button. Enter a computer name for your domain controller in the “Computer name” box (again, I used “MDT”), and click the “OK” button:
Click “OK” again when prompted that you will need to reboot, and then click the “Close” button. Click the “Restart now” button when prompted to restart the virtual machine.
At this point, you will probably want to reserve the MDT server an IP address, and you will need to install the WDS role.
To configure a reservation in DHCP for the MDT server, open your DC virtual machine, log in if necessary, and open the DHCP console from Start > All Programs > Administrative Tools. Expand the IPv4 node, expand the scope, and click on the Address Leases item:
You should see a lease listed for the MDT server (in my case, “MDT.demo.local”. Right-click on this lease item, and select “Add to Reservation”:
Click the “OK” button when receiving a prompt that the lease has been converted to a reservation successfully:
You should now see a new reservation for the MDT server in the DHCP console:
Now that your MDT server has a DHCP lease, go back to the MDT virtual machine and log on as Administrator. Once logged on and the Initial Configuration Tasks window appears, click the “Provide computer name and domain” link, and then click the “Change” button. Select the “Domain” radio button, and enter the domain name (in my example, demo.local), and click the “OK” button:
Enter the domain Administrator account and password information in the boxes provided, and click the “OK” button to join the MDT server to the domain:
Click the “OK” button when prompted that the server has joined the domain successfully:
Click the “OK” button, then the “Close” button, and restart the computer when prompted to finish the domain join process.
Once the virtual machine reboots, click the “Switch User” button, then click “Other User”:
Enter the domain Administrator user account and password in the boxes provided (the user account should be entered in the form of DOMAIN\Administrator – in my lab, this equates to DEMO\Administrator as seen in the screenshot below), and press ENTER or click the blue arrow to log into the domain as the domain Administrator:
Once logged in and after the Initial Configuration Tasks window appears, click the “Add roles” link to bring up the Add Roles Wizard:
Click the “Next” button, select the “Windows Deployment Services” role, and click the “Next” button:
Click “Next”, accept the default options that has the “Deployment Server” and “Transport Server” role services selected, click the “Next” button, and then click the “Install” button to begin installation of WDS:
If everything went well, you should see the installation report as successful – click the “Close” button to finish:
Next, you need to actually install the Windows 7 Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) and MDT 2010 Update 1. You can download the WAIK and MDT 2010 Update 1 from the links below:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=5753
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displayLang=en&id=25175
The WAIK is a (very large) ISO download, so be prepared for a long download, even on a fast connection. As to the MDT 2010 download, you will need the x64 installation MSI package.
Install the WAIK and MDT
Once the download of both files is complete, mount the WAIK ISO to your MDT virtual machine by clicking Media > DVD Drive > Insert Disk… in the virtual machine connection window for the MDT virtual machine. Browse to and select the ISO you downloaded, and click the “Open” button. This will mount the ISO to the VM. Autoplay should come up, and present you with a menu that looks like this:
Select the “Run StartCD item”, and the Windows 7 Automated Installation Kit wizard should appear. Click the “Windows AIK Setup” link to begin setup of the WAIK:
Click the “Next” button, click the “I Agree” radio button and click the “Next’” button (three times) to begin the installation:
Click the “Close’ button to finish the installation.
Next, you will need to install MDT, which means getting the installation MSI package into the VM. I use ISO Creator 3.1 (64-bit version) on my Hyper-V machines to turn folders into ISOs (which can then be mounted into Hyper-V VMs) – after you install ISO Recorder to your Hyper-V server, you can place the MDT installation MSI file into a folder, right-click on that folder, and select “Create ISO image file”. This will bring up the ISO Recorder wizard:
Select “CD” from the “Image format” drop-down box, and click the “Next” button to create the ISO. Click the “Finish” button when complete.
At this point, you should now have an ISO file that you can mount to the MDT virtual machine via Media > DVD Drive > Insert Disk… from the virtual machine connection window. Once the ISO file is mounted, browse into the mounted CD in the MDT VM, and run the x64 MSI file to start the MDT installation:
Click the “Next” button, click the “I accept the terms…” checkbox, click the “Next” button (twice), and click the “Install” button to begin the installation:
Click the “Finish” button to complete the installation.
At this point, you should now have both a domain controller and a server in your lab running MDT and WDS. Part 3 of this series covers adding the necessary operating system and application files, drivers, and the task sequences to deploy these.