Jason Lee

I recently posted about the shocking news that our trusted ChMS partner, ACS Technologies, dismissed their President and CEO. 

Late Last week Marvin Owen of ACS Technologies posted a link to a press release on their company blog officially announcing the election of Tom Rogers as the President.  And Executive IT Director, Dean Lisenby posted this on his personal blog.

I am glad that the company released the information publicly and hope this is just one of several steps to communicate this leadership change with the customers.  

It is my hope that ACS has a plan to more “actively” communicate to the whole customer base.  I think it’s safe to assume the vast majority of the customers are completely unaware of this election since they don’t frequent the corporate blog. I have had several fellow customers ask me about this leadership change and I have to admit I know nothing more than what I have posted in my previous post and what I have read on the two blogs referenced above….Maybe a email to the entire customer base would be good next step detailing some of the answers to questions that are being asked.

If you don’t follow the ACS corporate blog I encourage you to check out the post and leave your own comments or questions… Or post your questions here.

Church IT

Its not like its been busy around here, but I have failed to post anything since last week about our little boy… Natalie went into the doctors office on Friday and they decided to induce and told us to go the Maternity and Family Center at the hospital right after we left the doctors office… And never did I know how long of an adventure delivery would be… After 30+ hours of labor and 1.5 hours of pushing the doctor decided to take Natalie in for a C-Section.  Wow that was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.  The nurse said to come up around the curtain and even let me snap a few photos as they were pulling the little guy out.  The best line of the night was Dr. Ma as he was pulling Jonathan out saying "Whoa! he would have never fit out"

Jonathan Michael was born at 1:03 am. Weighing 10lbs 1.5 oz and 21.5 inches long.

Dr. Ma Delivering Jonathan Michael

 

I quickly learned that little is a relative term, on the scale it showed 10 lbs and 1.5 oz!

 

Everyone is doing great and mom is finally resting today.  It has been so much fun introducing everyone to my SON!  Wow that is just something totally still so crazy to me.  As I sit here writing I am watching my wife and baby sleep it is still such an amazing miracle… God is good!

There are tons more photos posted on our flickr and on Natalie’s Blog.

Thanks everyone for the thoughts and prayers during the delivery… It was fun to keep everyone updated on twitter… although I have to admit there were some times where I was distracted and didn’t keep it up to date… And for the record… those of you that wanted to early morning twitter I tried, but Natalie said "Oh, all those people don’t want to be woken up at 3 in the morning by a tweet…"  She wouldn’t buy my explanation that this was the whole reason people signed up for twitter to begin with…I figure if I am awake don’t you want to be too???  So you can thank Natalie for not getting an interruption to your sleep.

Family

News today, confirmed by reliable sources inside ACS, is that the Board of Directors of ACS Technologies, our trusted ChMS partner, has released CEO and President Hal Campbell.

Significant leadership changes always generate waves, so here are the thoughts and questions that came to mind in conversation today with my colleague Kirt Manuel, communications director at Northwoods.

• We have been very pleased with the partnership that has grown between us and ACS, even to the point of “Woah!” when ACS told us they were reorganizing their entire company to better serve megachurches like Northwoods. A sudden leadership change like this makes me think that the board of directors doesn’t approve of the company’s new direction. As our ministry operations are tightly wound up with ACS, we’d like some comment and explanation.
• ACS has earned some recent “street cred” with the introduction of iPhone and Windows Mobile applications as well as talk of widgets, gadgets, and such. With Facility Scheduler and AccessACS , they’ve built on a modern, robust framework and released sweet APIs. They’re building hooks, links, and syncs with third-party tools such as Outlook/Exchange, Planning Center Online, Constant Contact and the like. We’re putting a lot of eggs in those baskets, but now we’re feeling a fear getting scrambled. What can you say to reassure us that ACS will continue this forward-looking, leading edge work?
• From out here, ACS seems to be performing well in terms of product development, customer service, etc. Is that same performance excellence not carrying over to profitability? Is this decision a financial one?
• If this is a difference of vision between the now former president and the other primary shareholders, perhaps, we the customer base, can clarify things and help you craft a vision that serves us well.
• Who will take over this critical leadership role? Will you seek to hire from within or will you search some new outside expertise and vision?

Church IT, Tech News

I have noted when tech support has performed below our expectations in the past so that means I should also note when we receive excellent support too, right?

During our MDT Deployment I had had enough and decided that I wasn’t going to spend any more time on trouble shooting the issues… Thankfully we recently purchased a MSDN subscription and that included 4 telephone support incidents so Jeremie and I decided to give it a try.  I called the 800 number and was quickly routed to Tanner S. a senior support engineer who specializes in MDT and WDS.  I stated the issues we were having and Tanner quickly resolved our issue and I was on our way to success… so I thought.

After I completed the call with Tanner we came upon several other issues so I responded to the email he had sent me with the case number and asked 2 more questions which he quickly resolved.

After those issues were resolved we found a couple more problems and we contacted Tanners backup Chuck W.  who helped us resolve those issues.

These guys helped us resolve multiple issues which included:
- Windows PE not loading
- How to edit the startnet.cmd file when we had a timeout issue connecting to the WDS host
- Drivers not getting installed on images
- Including Intel Chipset drivers that are packaged and aren’t included in the OOBdrivers
- Application Installation errors during the MDT install

So needless to say these guys went over an above to get us going.  They could have simply said that the subsequent questions were not part of the case and closed the case but they were willing to conceder our support request all encompassing from the setup of MDT to the final deployment to our Dell 755s and we were allowed to ask questions along the way.  They solved our 1st problem and multiple other smaller issues afterward.  They both did it in a very gracious, and kind demeanor.  While they both could have told us to go find the answers on live.com or to read the documentation they were willing to answer all our questions… Even staying after their shift ended to make sure the test deployment completed without any errors after we made changes to the boot images. 

Kudos to Tanner and Chuck… Great customer support and a job well done!!!

Church IT, Tech

After we were able to get the deployment of Vista 32bit out to our Dell 755s tackling the install of Vista 64bit was next on the agenda.  The primary reason for pushing out 64bit was because of the memory threshold limit on 32bit.  Several of our old Dell 740s had 2 gb of added memory we wanted to move over to our new 755 boxes which put us over the 3.5gb limit.  Not a huge issue, but I also new down the road we would want to deploy 64bit versions of Server 2008 so we might as well work out the issues now.

Before you can start a 64bit install you have to add a 64bit OS to the list in MDT.  This is the same process as adding a 32bit OS and creating the task sequence as documented in the first MDT post.  When you include your 64bit OS in a task sequence, be sure in the title and description to note that this is the 64bit installer so there is no confusion later. After the OS and Task Sequence are added you will need to add any 64bit Out of the Box Drivers this is the same process that you did with your 32 bit drivers.

Lastly you need to make 64bit a supported platform with your deployment point.  Up to this point when you updated the boot image MDT only updated the 32bit .wim file so now you need to tell MDT to also update the 64 bit boot image.

Go to Deployment Point, and Choose Properties for the Deployment Point and then on the general tab tick the check box next to x64 and choose OK.  Lastly update your Deployment Point.

 

After your deployment point is updated you will need to add this new boot image to your WDS server.  Go to Server Manager and navigate to the boot images in your WDS server.  Right Click on Boot images and select new boot image.  This time you will select the 64bit boot image, LiteTouchPE_x64.wim, found in:
\Distribution\Boot\.  You can leave both the 32bit and 64 bit boot images enabled so when you pxe boot off your server you select the appropriate architecture for your install.

When you PXE boot off the WDS Server you will be presented with the two LiteTouch boot images, select the x64 image.

After you select the x64 image the WindowsPE installer that you have seen in the 32 bit installs will display… this time with one exception, the Operating systems displayed as tasks available are the 64bit options you added in the task sequences.

 

64 bit OS Install “Got-Ya’s”

1.  The intel sata driver for the Dell 755 appears in MDT as a driver that is both 32 and 64 bit.  Its not.  When you boot into WindowsPE the first time after adding all your drivers and updating the boot images you will get a lovely error like the following:
File: \windows\system32\ddrivers\iastor.sys
Status: 0xc0000359
Info: Windows Failed to load because a critical system driver is missing or corrupt.

This happens only after you update the 64bit boot image from MDT.  The original 64bit boot image has the needed storage controller driver but when you update MDT it includes the OOB drivers you added.  Since intel’s storage driver is really not a 64 bit driver like MDT thinks it is the 64bit WindowsPE bombs.   So what do you need to do?  The easiest way to do fix this is the following steps:

• Delete all drivers from the Out of Box Drivers in MDT
• Download both the 64 bit and 32 bit Intel Matrix Storage Manager Drivers.
• Add only the 32 bit Driver to OOBD
• Open the properties of that driver and un-tick the x64 check box.

• Next add the 64 bit driver.  This time you will have to select “Import drivers even if they are duplicates of an existing driver”

• Next you will need to edit this newly added driver.  The easiest way to find this driver is to sort all OOB Drivers by Platform.  The newly added driver will display x86, x64.  Edit that driver to only support x64 platform.

• After your drivers are updated, import all your drivers again and update your deployment point.

 

See other Posts on Vista Deployment with MDT:

• Vista Deployment
• Installing and Configuring MDT
• Deploying Vista to VMware Test box and Dell 755
• MDT and Dell 755 Network issues
• Deploying to Vista 64 bit to Dell 755

Church IT, Tech

Its fun when your wife starts to blog… for several reasons… but the biggest reason is that it is just cool to read her take on our life.   Its fun to watch her start using Flickr Pro, Windows Live Writer and her wordpress.com blog….  Maybe I can outsource my blogging to her! 

One of my favorite she posted this week is her OSU Jersey and the little animal shirt for the baby. 

So with that I say welcome to Blogging World, leave her a comment and welcome her too….

Family

With the pending arrival of Baby Lee, several have asked how we plan to communicate when labor starts, baby is born etc….So we have setup a couple ways for you to stay connected.  If you would like updates about Baby Lee’s arrival you can select one of the following:

1. Follow the updates on Twitter.com, the twitter account is ‘TheBabyLee’

2. Get updates via text messages on your phone (note normal messaging rates apply) by sending ’follow thebabylee’ to 40404, and then reply to the confirmation with your name.  (Don’t include the quotes when you send follow thebabylee)

3. Get a daily digest of the updates above via email by submitting your email address in the field below.

Family

After we configured MDT for our deployment we were ready to start testing the deployment.  This test was going to to be on the physical hardware that we would later roll Vista out to and also a VMWare ESX test machine.  The VMWare box was to limit the trips over to the hardware while we were ironing out the bumps.  We deployed Vista 32 bit in this scenario.

After you have your deployment setup in MDT you next need to select your boot image in WDS that you just created by updating your MDT Deployment Point. This boot image is located in the Deployment Point Share \distribution\boot\litetouchPE_x86.wim

 

Once your boot image is added you are ready to start your client machine and PXE boot the device.  (normally F12).

Once the PXE boot process starts, you will have to hit F12 a second time and then you should see windowsPE start up.  If all is configured correctly you should get the Task Sequence dialog box where you can select your Task Sequence you would like to perform in our case Vista 32 bit install.

Next You will be prompted to choose the applications that you want to install during the OS installation.  The applications are Displayed and Installed in the order in which you added them to MDT.

After you select the applications you want, select next and the process starts… after a few minutes the OS is installed, and you are looking at your desktop of a machined joined to the domain.

Some  “Got-Ya’s” general and Dell 755 specific.

SQL Database
Quite a few blogs indicate that you need to use the SQL Database in conjunction with MDT.  After talking with Tanner at Microsoft this is not needed in an organization with a couple hundred clients being installed from MDT, especially when you are managing just 5-10 flavors of workstations.

When we first booted our Virtual machine the LiteTouch environment started but we were stuck at a command prompt.  This was because of some issues with the database.  Once we removed the dependencies on the database we were able to move forward.

MultiCast
After using ghost for so may years we were thinking of Multi-Cast in the Ghost traditional sense and had enabled Multi-Cast in MDT and WDS.  This is actually not needed since our volume is small enough and WDS Multi-Cast works very differently.  WDS Multicast starts with the first client connection, it doesn’t wait until you tell it to ‘go’ like Ghost, so then when the next client connects it picks up where the first deployment already in progress is and then the third the same… After the first deployment is done number 2 picks up at the start and catches what it ‘missed’ and then the same for number 3.  With scenarios with only a couple hundred clients Muli-Cast isn’t needed.

WindowsPE Boot Error Dell 755 Specific “Got-ya”
During the start up of WinowsPE on the Dell 755 the clients would display a error: “A connection to the deployment share (\\servername\distribution$\) could not be made.  The deployment will not proceed.  Can not reach DeployRoot. Possible Cause: Network routing error or Network Configuration error.
We found two solutions… one to add more time for the client machine to get an IP address from the server by editing the StartNet.cmd file in the WIM or to connect the Dell755 to a 3com switch rather than thru a linksys switch.  Finding a switch on the network where the install would work from is a much easier solution than rebuilding your WIM file every time you update it.  NOTE: when you update the WIM in MDT it rewrites your boot image and you loose any changes that you have made to the StartNet.cmd.

To update the StartNet.cmd:
Run the following on your server:

Then go to the location that you extracted the files and then go to the \Windows\System32 and edit the startnet.cmd file to ping the WDS Server x number of times (where x is the amount of time you need to get an IP, in our case it was about one ping to the server 8-12 pings UPDATED 10/8/08).

After you have edited the file run the following on the server:

And don’t forget every time you Update MDT you will have to update your startnet.cmd file.

Errors Installing Applications
When installing applications with LiteTouch we had to play around with the sequence to get it to install without any issues.  There were 4 major bumps we had to figure out to make the Applications deploy without any issues.

• Don’t include SP1 for Office 2007 as part of the installation.  Office 2007 gives you the ability to ‘package’ updates when you install Office by putting those packages in the Updates folder of your installation source.  The Office 2007 install worked some times, but then would error out causing all the other applications to fail that were later in the sequence.  Once SP1 for Office was removed it worked without an issue.
• Adobe Reader and Flash would require user intervention stopping the deployment.  Adobe provides a customization tool called Adobe Customization Wizard 9 it is very similar to the Office OCT tool to but it allows you to deploy Acrobat and Reader.  After you customize the deployments you are able to run Acrobat or Reader installs silently.
• Don’t install flash from MSI, rather use the .exe installer with the /s switch to install silently.  For some reason MDT doesn’t deploy .msi installers well without changing the command line for the installer.  It was easier to not mess with .msi installers and just use the exe installer.  If you do have to install an application from .msi with MDT then you should plan to run the msi with the following:Command Line: msiexec /i “AppInstaller.msi” /qn from the source directory that contains the installer.
• The last issue is another Dell 755 specific “Got-Ya”.  The applications fail when you are installing them on a Dell 755 because there is no driver loaded by default for the SM Bus Controller.  Even though you add those drivers with the other Dell 755 drivers they didn’t load.  After looking into this with Tanner and Chuck from Microsoft we found that the Chipset driver for this dell is actually an application that extracts and installs the drivers, so the simple downloaded files don’t have the needed .dlls for MDT to pick up the drivers, even after you decompress the R174616.exe file from Dell.  The solution is to run the Intel – Driver (v.8.3.0.1013,A12) that you download from dell with a couple switches to give you an extracted version of the driver that MDT can import.  Once you download R174616.exe and extracted it (default locati
  on is c:\dell\drivers\R174616) run setup.exe -a -a -p c:\extract\INF to extract the drivers to c:\extract\inf.  After you have extracted the driver you n
  eed to add this directory to the OOBD list in MDT, then Update your Deployment Point and reboot the client.  Your applications should install as expected.

 

See other Posts on Vista Deployment with MDT:

• Vista Deployment
• Installing and Configuring MDT
• Deploying Vista to VMware Test box and Dell 755
• MDT and Dell 755 Network issues
• Deploying to Vista 64 bit to Dell 755

Church IT, Tech

The install and configuration process for MDT (Microsoft Deployment Tool Kit) is fairly well documented.

At the time of this post version 4.2 was the latest and greatest version of MDT and can be Downloaded from Microsoft.  Also a good resource for information on MDT is the Optional – MDT Print-Ready Documentation that can be downloaded from the same page.

Items you need before you can begin:

• Windows Deployment Services (WDS) – included as a role in Windows 2008 – Here is the download site for WDS for Server 2003
• Windows Automated Installation Kit 1.1 (WAIK 1.1)
• Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008 (MDT 2008)

Because of our problems in having success building the answer files to automated the OS deployment from WDS we have elected in our configuration to use WDS merely as a PXE boot server, so when you enable the service on your server there is little configuration for WDS since the LiteTouch (MDT) scripting will take care of everything for us.

Installing WDS:
You can download the Step-By-Step guide for WDS from Microsoft technet.  This document is a good resource for installing and setting up WDS.  Since we are using MDT we only needed to follow the first 10 pages, but the rest is a good resource to understand how WDS works.

At the first launch of the WDS console, you will have to configure the server. This will create and populate a folder called RemoteInstall. This folder is shared as reminst. It is recommended not to store this folder on the system partition.  In our case we mounted an iSCSI volume for storing our deployment data.

You can run WDS on the same server as your DHCP Server but you will have to modify which ports that server listens on.. In our case WDS and DHCP are on two separate servers so no worries there.

Lastly check to make sure that you are accepting all PXE boot requests.  This can be configured in the Server properties under the PXE Response Settings.  Since a boot image will only be active for us when we are deploying an OS to machines there isn’t a risk of unauthorized access.

Installing WAIK 1.1:

From MS’s Site:The Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) is designed to help corporate IT professionals customize and deploy the Microsoft Windows Vista™ family of operation systems. By using Windows AIK, you can perform unattended Windows installations, capture Windows images with ImageX, and create Windows PE images.

You must have WAIK installed prior to installing MDT, we won’t use it directly with MDT since LiteTouch configures the install for us, but you have to have it as a pre-req for installing MDT.

Installing MDT:

From MS’s Site: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit technologies eliminate interaction time required to install desktop and server operating systems. Interaction at the targeted computer may take a few moments using the Lite Touch Installation (LTI) method or it can be completely automated using Zero Touch Installation (ZTI). Zero Touch Installation utilizes Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 or Systems Management Server 2003 with the Operating System Deployment Feature Pack. Lite Touch Installation can be used when software distribution tools are not in place.

Once MDT is installed open the Deployment Workbench MMC console. and Click on Distribution Share.  You will see a display of the tasks that need completed in order to deploy a workstation with MDT.

OS FILES – Next you need to add the operating systems you want to deploy (it can be either or both 32 bit and 64 bit OS) by mounting the ISO or inserting the DVD of the media in the server.  Right click Operating Systems and click New. Select Full set of source files. Give the drive letter of your OS DVD or mount iso file, and Finish. This takes a bit, so its a good time for a break here.

APPLICTATIONS – After you have imported the OS you will need to add any applications that you would like to install.When you right click applications and choose new you will have the choice of where your source files live.  For our applications we did install sources from a network file share.  Since its later going to map a drive to this location during the install its important to use the FQDN for this rather than a mapped network drive letter.

For Office 2007 applications you can have the installer run silently with the key embed by using the Office Customization tool.  To launch the OCT run the application installer with the  admin switch  (setup.exe /admin).  If you add the Office 2007 application from CD the customize tool is a tab later in the applications but it was easier to use the network share already configured.

Drivers  – Next you can add any drivers needed fort your specific hardware and group them by that model.

Task Sequence - After you have added your OS, Apps and Drivers you are ready to build the instructions on how you would like the OS to be deployed.  Building the task sequence builds the OS install instructions including the infamous unattend.xml.

Basic Task sequence instructions are:

-Click New in the Task Sequences context menu and fill in the General Settings. Assign your Task sequence ID, Task sequence name, and Task sequence comments.
-On the Select Template screen, select the Standard Client Task Sequence
-On the Select OS screen, select the OS you added in the Operating Systems
-On the Specify Product Key screen, type in your Product Key or Do not specify a product key at this time  if you are using a KMS to activate your OS.
-On the OS Settings screen, fill in your organization name and a home page for IE.
-On the Admin Password screen, type the local admin password of the target computer.

Deployment Point – the last step is setting up your deployment point, this is the network share where the client machines will connect to the server to pull the customized installation.

Basic steps are:
- Right click on Deployment Point and choose new.
- Choose a lab deployment point
- Name the Deployment Point (in our case Install and Build)
- Don’t Allow users to select apps on upgrade
- Don’t ask for a image to be captured
- Don’t set the local admin password
- Don’t ask for product key
- On network share use the defaults
- Don’t configure the user state.

Now that MDT is setup we need to make a few more final changes so that the OS installation runs with minimal user intervention.  This is done by editing the Bootstrap.ini and Customsettings.ini files.  A good reference of the settings that can be configured by these files can be found here in the Property Reference Guide.

Our CustomSettings.ini and bootstrap.ini files are configured so that we only have to answer two quest
ions while the OS is installing 1. Which OS to install and 2. Which applications we want installed.  Our .ini files look&nb
sp; like this:

Custom Settings.ini

[Settings]
Priority=Default
Properties=MyCustomProperty

[Default]
OSInstall=Y
UserDataLocation=NETWORK
SkipBDDWelcome=YES
SkipAppsOnUpgrade=YES
SkipCapture=YES
SkipAdminPassword=YES
SkipProductKey=YES
SkipBitLocker=YES
SkipComputerName=NO
SkipDeploymentType=YES
SkipSummary=YES
SkipUserData=YES
SkipLocaleSelection=YES
SkipTimeZone=YES
UserID=The user credentials for accessing network resources.
UserDomain=The domain in which a user’s credentials (specified in UserID) exist.
UserPassword=The password for user credentials specified in UserID.
TimeZoneName=Central Standard Time
OrgName=Orgainzation Name Here
AreaCode=309
JoinDomain=The domain that the target computer joins after the target operating system is deployed
DomainAdmin=The account is used to join the computer to a domain.
DomainAdminDomain=The domain in which a user’s credentials (specified in DomainAdmin) exist
DomainAdminPassword=Password used to join the computer to the domain
UserLocale=en-US
KeyboardLocale=0409:00000409
InputLocale= en-US
UILanguage=en-us

Bootstrap.ini
[Settings]
Priority=Default

[Default]
SkipBDDWelcome=YES
DeployRoot=\\ServerName\Distribution$
UserDomain=The domain in which a user’s credentials (specified in UserID) exist.
UserID=The user credentials for accessing network resources.
UserPassword=The password for user credentials specified in UserID.

***Note UserDomain, ID and Password are in bootstrap.ini AND customsettings without these in both places you are prompted for credentials when you first boot into WindowsPE.

After you are ready to deploy your OS right click on your Deployment Point and choose UPDATE.  This builds the WIM file that you will boot from.

See other Posts on Vista Deployment with MDT:

• Vista Deployment
• Installing and Configuring MDT
• Deploying Vista to VMware Test box and Dell 755
• MDT and Dell 755 Network issues
• Deploying to Vista 64 bit to Dell 755

Church IT, Tech

For the past few months it has been our plan to roll out Vista to our IT staff to start learning and becoming familiar with Vista.  Part of this planning has been to figure out how to customize and automate the roll out process.  After a bit of reading we decided that Windows Deployment Services was the best route to go rather than continuing to use Ghost to deploy our machines.  A large factor to this is WDS being free.

In the next few posts I will document our configuration and the tips and tricks we learned along the way.  This project only included one support case with Microsoft and a couple dents in the walls from my head banging activities.

Or Project Goal was to find a way to deploy vista with our Enterprise Open license on each machine with a basic set of applications that all our users will use.  In Vista the answer files for sysprep are quite a bit more involved than they were in deploying XP so using the Microsoft solution to deploy the OS seemed to be more logical than a Hybrid between Ghost and Sysprep.

Part 1:Installing WDS

Installing Windows Deployment Services is a very straight forward process, but you have to decided if you want to do the installation on a Windows 2003 server or a W2k8 server.  There are some new features installing on a 2008 server and since we are moving that way it made sense to roll this new server out as a 2008 box.

We downloaded the Step by step guide to Windows Deployment services. This document was a good resource to answer a lot of the questions about what each aspect of the service was doing.  This document includes good step by step instructions to capture a image of a workstation and then push it out to a second machine.

The catch with this process was the creating of the answer files.  When you are using WDS you boot into WindowPE which allows you to perform functions like format, partition and install the OS.  WindowsPE requires answer files for specific functions as well as the OS requiring an answer file.

There appear to be a vast number of resources on these answer files but some turn out to be very confusing.  MS provides a tool called the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK). The WAIK is designed to help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), system builders, and corporate IT professionals deploy Windows onto new hardware. The Windows AIK is a set of deployment tools supporting the latest release of Windows. The WAIK Includes Windows System Image Manger which is a GUI that creates the unattend answer files for the deployment of the OS.

One major issue with our answer files we found out later down the road you, which is contrary to all the documentation that we read you cannot partition an drive and format with that partition to 100%, you have to give a specific variable to the size you want the partition to be.  (per Tanner at MS, more on that later)

After fighting with the answer files for a while I turned to ITdiscuss.org and the CITRT IRC channel.  Micheal Sainz brought MDT to my radar.  MDT,  Microsoft Deployment Tool kit, is a great tool for prepping the OS with applications, drivers and updates and the MDT scripts the OS installation that can be done from disk or a PXE boot server.

So here are the details of the process:

• Vista Deployment
• Installing and Configuring MDT
• Deploying Vista to VMware Test box and Dell 755
• MDT and Dell 755 Network issues
• Deploying to Vista 64 bit to Dell 755

Church IT, Tech