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I Passed the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Exam

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I wrote the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit exam this past Wednesday. The exam number is 70-635, TS: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008, Desktop Deployment and I managed to pass. I don’t use the Zero Touch (ZTI) features of MDT, no SCCM, no SMS, no MOM. I exclusively use Light Touch (LTI) with WDS and sometimes a USB boot key for my installs in my production environment, which put me at a slight disadvantage for the exam. Unfortunately, there are no training guides for this exam as of yet. There are study guides for 70-624 which cover BDD, the predecessor to MDT. So those will help a little. There were also some podcasts which covered ZTI and the preparation I did for TechDays helped me cover the areas I didn’t know as solid  for this exam.

There was close to 80 questions on this exam, so this is not for the faint of heart. All in all, 70-635 was a good solid exam covering all facets of Office 2007 and Windows Vista deployment with MDT. With 76 or so questions to write, it is time consuming, but worth it if you want to prove your worth with Microsoft Deployments.

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.