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Installing Microsoft Forefront Client without Forefront Management Server

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As part of our Microsoft School Agreement, we are licensed for Microsoft Forefront Client on the machines covered under the agreement which is all the computers. I have been using McAfee Total Protection. I like this as it doesn’t matter if the computer is connected to the domain or not, updates happen automatically. It works well I have no complaints, but no use paying for a product twice.

Deployment of Forefront Client

I hit the Microsoft page for Forefront with hopes that there would be information on how to install it. There is a deployment guide, but it is a major production. There is about 5 roles that need to be deployed. You can install all of them to the same server, but I am uncertain if Windows 2008 is supported or not. I am deploying this on a Hyper-V server as a VM guest so installing Windows Server 2003 is no big deal but I am not interested in going down that road today. I just wanted to install the client and have it pick up its up dates from the WSUS server I have deployed internally. After checking out the documentation a few times, I finally stumbled upon how to install Forefront for employees use on home computers.

Installing Forefront

The command line is pretty straight forward. In the client directory of the CD, jump to a command prompt and run CLIENTSETUP /NOMOM

That’s it. It will install the client and then if you have machine setup to check your WSUS server for updates, then it will go out, pick up the updates from the WSUS server I have deployed internally.

There are some caveats, one is you have to go to each machine to deploy this. You could script it but if you are going to go through that, then why not fully deploy the server. The second thing is you don’t get reporting back from the clients. In my case, I don’t mind, they all call me when something goes wrong. I think over the next few months when I have time, I will look at deploying the management server for this.

Using MDT 2010 to Deploy Windows 7 to a VHD

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I was getting caught up on some blog reading over my lunch hour and noticed a new post by the Deployment Guys on their blog. If you didn’t know, with Windows 7, you can now boot from VHD; there is even a trick to make Windows Vista boot from VHD. Booting loads the VHD and uses your physical hardware, its a great way multi-boot a computer into an OS that is VHD aware. In the Microsoft world, at this point in time, this means Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

The post from the Deployment Guys blog explains how to deploy Windows 7 using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 (MDT 2010) to a computer and instead of deploying to Disk 0 Partition 1, it is set to deploy to VHD file.

How to Setup MDT to Create a Boot from VHD Deployment

So how do we do this? Here’s the point form version. (You can get pictures from the Deployment Guys blog)

  1. Create a task sequence to deploy Windows 7
  2. You are going to insert 3 steps in the Pre-Install \ New Computer only phase
  3. Edit the task sequence that changes how the drive is partitioned (I presented how to do this at TechDays Ottawa). In this case we don’t want to partition or format the drive. Disable this task sequence.
  4. Insert a Set Task Sequence Variable Step named Set Boot VHD Location. You set the location of the VHD file is by setting the Task Sequence Variable to BootVHDLocation and set the Value to the location where you want the file to exist. (for example C:\Boot1Windows7.vhd) Ensure that the file you named in the variable doesn’t already exist.
  5. Insert a Set Task Sequence Variable Step named Set Boot VHD Size. Set the task sequence variable to BootVHDSize and set the value to the maximum size you want the VHD to be. Ensure you have enough space to grow to the maximum.
  6. Insert a Run Command Line Step and call it Setup VHD. The command line is cscript.exe “%SCRIPTROOT%\ZTIDiskPartVHD.wsf (There is no start in value.)
  7. Download the script ZTIDiskPartVHD.wsf and copy is to your Distrobution$\Scripts folder. The link to the script is at ZTIDiskpartVHD.zip
  8. Run your task sequence on a computer and it will install Windows 7 into a VHD.

This doesn’t work on machines that use Bitlocker to encrypt the drive.

The full article can be found at: http://blogs.technet.com/deploymentguys/archive/2009/03/03/deploying-win-7-to-boot-from-vhd-with-mdt-2010.aspx. They have pretty pictures to help you out.

This is a really smart way to boot into different environments. You can have different VHD images for different tasks, ie. One for programming, one for gaming, etc. Pretty sweet and easy to deploy when using MDT

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 (MDT 2010)

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The MDT 2010 Beta is now available on the Microsoft Connect site as I saw on the Deployment Toolkit Team Blog . This is the next version of the Microsoft Deployment toolkit, which is an accelerator for both OS and application deployments.

What’s New?

  • Support for deploying Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 in addition to deploying Windows Vista SP1, Windows Server 2008, Windows XP SP3, and Windows 2003 SP2
  • Hard Link Migrations using USMT 4 for Refresh scenarios which will dramatically reduce your user state backup and restore time
  • Integration of the new Windows AIK 2.0 Beta toolset such as DISM and BCDBOOT, and Windows PE 3.0

Also note, this version is for LAB deployments of Windows 7 using Lite Touch. Michael Niehaus recommends you not deploy this into your live environment which, for most people, is smart idea. No one has ever accused me of being smart or being like most people, but since I don’t want to break my existing MDT setup, I’ll install this to a Hyper-V server and make a test environment for myself. If I get a chance to give it a thorough test and it doesn’t break what I have working already, it might just end up in my live environment before Groundhog’s Day.