Hi my friends, very very long time no see. I sincerely apologize for my period of absence, however this is partially due to lack of new content to write, which is caused by a period of not working with deployment tools.

In previous blog posts, I’ve set out some default settings to configure MDT with, such as the CustomSettings.ini and Bootstrap.ini, and then there is this script which configures your MDT environment automatically with PowerShell.

This time I thought it would be useful to write about the requirements you need for implementing MDT on (a customers) site:

table 1.1 Server Details:

[wpsm_comparison_table id=”1″ class=””]

If you want to incorporate the MDT database integration, you’ll need a database on a SQL server, with service accounts with the following permissions:

table 1.2 Database Details:

[wpsm_comparison_table id=”2″ class=””]

If you install Windows Deployment Services to transport your MDT boot image with PXE boot, you’ll need to configure certain scope options in DHCP, take notice that the DHCP option 60 is only needed to be configured when DHCP and WDS run on one and the same server:

table 1.3 DHCP Details:

[wpsm_comparison_table id=”3″ class=””]

The IP helper address needs to be configured, when your DHCP and WDS server are not on the same subnet. This prevents the boot image from being loaded into and over the memory of the network device, but point’s directly to the WDS server.

table 1.4 Network Details:

[wpsm_comparison_table id=”4″ class=””]

Next up, service accounts, based on least privileges needed to function, and, for setting the OU permissions for the domain join account, there is this very neat little script from MDT guru Johan Arwidmark:

table 1.5 Service Account Details:

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You can put accounts in groups and give permissions to groups if more people need the same permissions to work with MDT:

table 1.6 Domain Group Details:

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Lastly again folder permissions based on least privileges, and also the SQL Share for authentication of unknown users during Operating System Deployment – WinPE phase

table 1.7 Folder permission Details:

[wpsm_comparison_table id=”7″ class=””]

So next time you’re going to implement MDT, keep in mind some (preferably all) of the mentioned requirements, and hopefully this will make life again much easier.

~Things not working, privileges wrong? Don’t hesitate to let me know!

Cheers! Rens