Daily Archives: 4 February 2013

MDT 2012 Settings for fully automated LTI deployment, Part II: Customsettings.ini

Published / by Rens Hollanders / 48 Comments on MDT 2012 Settings for fully automated LTI deployment, Part II: Customsettings.ini

So my second part of how to achieve a fully automated deployment, can be used to create a reference image or to deploy a computer.

Lets start customizing 🙂

First of all we can set our priority and fortunately the ‘deployment bunny’ has written a great blog about the available properties for setting the priority in which order MDT executes which task with which properties:

[Settings]
Priority=MACAddress, Default
Properties=MyCustomProperty

In my case I have set the priority on MACAddress first, this means that MDT will look for a machine with the given MACAddress and apply the custom defined properties only for this machine. This is especially handy when we want to use our deploymentshare for more then one purpose alone. In my case the ability to create an automatic reference image but also being able to use other task sequences from that same deploymentshare to other computers.

So if we specify our MACAddress here, we can then apply the settings we want. In my case I start again with configuring the IP address for a virtual machine which occurs in a back-end server environment with no particular DHCP present on the VLAN.

[00:00:00:00:00]
OSDAdapterCount=1
OSDAdapter0EnableDHCP=FALSE
OSDAdapter0IPAddressList=192.168.1.45
OSDAdapter0SubnetMask=255.255.255.0
OSDAdapter0Gateways=192.168.1.1
OSDAdapter0DNSServerList=192.168.1.11,192.168.1.12
OSDAdapter0DNSSuffix=contoso.local

Then I specify that the task sequence wizard needs to be skipped by providing the following option: SkipTaskSequence=YES
And immediately after that I fill-in the desired TaskSequenceID which needs to be executed automatically, which is in my case OSB001 (Operating System Build 001)

SkipTaskSequence=YES
TaskSequenceID=OSB001

Next we need to provide an computer name for our reference build. With the SkipComputerName=YES we prevent the hostname wizard, but when we do this, we also need to provide an hostname for the upcoming deployment. The task sequence variable “OSDComputerName” will be picked up and understood by the scripts if provided.

SkipComputerName=YES
OSDComputerName=OSBUILD

Then to capture the created reference image we provide the following parameters:
SkipCaptures=YES obviously the wizard pane needs to be skipped. But because we want to capture our reference image, we provide the DoCapture=YES setting too, followed by the backup location which needs to point to an accessible network-share and provide the file-name for the captured WIM file.

SkipCapture=YES
DoCapture=YES
ComputerBackupLocation=\\server01.contoso.local\deploymentshare$\Captures
BackupFile=W7ENTSP1x64EN.wim

So far our custom properties for one particular fully automated Task Sequence. When all the other configurable options will remain the same we can configure these options beginning with the organization name displayed during deployment. The organization name displayed can be modified by providing the parameter “_SMSTSOrgName” and a value for the organizational name, for example “Contoso IT”. Further, OSInstall lets MDT know we want to deploy and operating system.

[Default]
_SMSTSOrgName=Contoso IT
OSInstall=Y

The following options are for preventing the multiple wizard panes popping up for input or requesting input. At default, we don’t want the Task Sequence wizard to skip, therefore we set this setting to “NO”. With SkipApplications and SkipAppsOnUpgrade we can see the apps that will be installed if the Application Guid has been provided in the customsettings.ini. Once again, Andrew Barnes has written a nice blog about that particular subject.

Skipping the capture, makes sure that your deployment will not ask you to start capturing at the end of the deployment and defining the property DoCapture=NO answers the question that your deployment will not be captured.

SkipTaskSequence=NO
SkipApplications=NO
SkipAppsOnUpgrade=YES
SkipCapture=YES
DoCapture=NO

Then a few more obvious properties; SkipAdminPassword prevents the wizard pane for providing your local admin password for the machine that will be deployed. SkipProductKey will skip the request for a valid product key which should / could already be filled in in your unattended.xml. The SkipDeploymentType and DeploymentType evaluate what kind of deployment scenario will be used, because there are tree scenario’s possible: NEWCOMPUTER, REFRESH, REPLACE

NEWCOMPUTER
The target computer is a new computer that has never been a member of the network.
REFRESH
The target computer is an existing computer on the network that needs the desktop environment standard to be redeployed.
REPLACE
An existing computer on the network is being replaced with a new computer. The user state migration data is transferred from the existing computer to a new computer.

SkipAdminPassword=YES
SkipProductKey=YES
SkipDeploymentType=YES
DeploymentType=NEWCOMPUTER

Then we are going to join the computer to our domain, SkipDomainMembership=YES means we will not see the domain join wizard pane. If we provide the following additional parameters the computer will automatically join the specified domain:

SkipDomainMembership=YES
MachineObjectOU=OU=Computers,OU=Laptops,DC=contoso,DC=local
NetworkLocation=Work
JoinDomain=contoso
DomainAdmin=srv-rollout
DomainAdminDomain=contoso
DomainAdminPassword=

If there is userdata that needs to be migrated the following can be specified “SkipUserData” and “UserDataLocation”, if any existing profiles are present on the computer an USMT MIG file will be created which can be placed back after the OS deployment has been completed. More information on MDT in combination with USMT, please check this blog

SkipUserData=YES
UserDataLocation=\\server01.contoso.local\deploymentshare$\USMTdata

The only wizard pane we would like to see if we cannot prepopulate the hostname in advance is the ComputerName pane, by providing the following setting we will be asked for an hostname:

SkipComputerName=NO

Then the locale selection can be prepopulated too! “SkipLocaleSelection” and “SkipTimeZone” will hide or show the locale selection wizard pane, providing the following parameters will set the locale settings:

SkipLocaleSelection=YES
SkipTimeZone=YES
TimeZoneName=W. Europe Standard Time
TimeZone=110
AreaCode=045
Language=00000413
SystemLocale=00000413
UserLocale=en-US
UILanguage=en-US
InputLocale=nl-US
KeyboardLocale=nl-US

A new addition to my customsettings.ini (which I have added december 2013) is setting the native resolution for each device, by providing the following settings, the machine will be forced to start “enable auto detection” of display settings. This way, you’re always getting the most optimized resolution settings for your device. See this blog for more information.

; Display Settings
BitsPerPel=32
VRefresh=60
XResolution=1
YResolution=1

“SkipBitLocker” will show the Bitlocker configuration pane during deployment, and the last of the regular wizard panes “SkipSummary” wil not show the configured properties of which the deployment will commense with after we have clicked next.

SkipBitLocker=YES
SkipSummary=YES

Setting the homepage for every deployment that will be executed, use the property: Home_page=

Home_page=http://www.contoso.com

Supplying the eventservice, makes sure that live monitoring will be reported back to the MDT deploymentshare at which current step your deploymentphase actually is.
Providing the value “SLSShareDynamicLogging” provides actual replication of the BDD.log which covers all the actions executed by the task sequence and is a nice feature for centrally logging the deployment progress!
In the end, using “HideShell” makes the Windows 7 GUI disappear and only the MDT progressbar visible for the length of the deployment.

EventService=http://CONTOSO01:9800
SLShareDynamicLogging=%DeployRoot%\Logs\%COMPUTERNAME%
HideShell=YES

In the end we specify which WSUS updates will not be included in the update process. Because enabling the two steps already present in the task sequence “Windows Update (Pre-Application Installation)” and “Windows Update (Post-Application Installation)” will start querying your WSUS server or Windows Update Server on the internet and download all available Windows update present at that time. To exclude certain updates we can first of al run a /query from which we can easily see which updates are being advertised to our computers.

By providing the following additional command: “/query” to the already existing command: “cscript.exe “%SCRIPTROOT%\ZTIWindowsUpdate.wsf”” we can see in our BDD.log which updates are being advertised to the system.

In my case I wanted to exclude the following updates:

;Microsoft Browser Choice Screen Update for EEA Users of Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB976002)
WUMU_ExcludeKB1=976002
;Microsoft Silverlight (KB2636927)
WUMU_ExcludeKB2=2636927
;Windows Internet Explorer 9 for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB982861)
WUMU_ExcludeKB3=982861
;Bing Desktop (KB2694771)
WUMU_ExcludeKB4=2694771

Note that each update that needs to be excluded needs to be specified seperately, and numbered each time with a higher number for every new to be excluded updated.

Hope that this provides some insight in creating a fully automated reference image and explains the purpose of each property in the way that I have experienced it.

Download the script here:

zip
CustomSettings.txt