Over at the Windows team blog – Stephen Rose wrote about the new RTM update of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 to what’s known as Update 1. For those of you familiar with MDT already – this shouldn’t be a surprise to you – it’s an incremental update that has been in the works for a while. For those of you who are NOT familiar with MDT – it’s our FREE (as in beer) solution accelerator that anyone can use working for any company (including independent consultants) of any size (yup – a few PCs to 100’s of thousands) to make their lives SO MUCH EASIER when undertaking the task of deploying and maintaining “builds / images” of workstations.
Newbies note below: the basic flow of using MDT for Light Touch and Zero Touch. (more info at Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Home)
You can use MDT to create and manage your deployment medium: anything from a simple bootable USB stick all the way up to an integrated mass deployment System Center Configuration Manager or PXE boot process. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Update 1 supports deployment of Windows 7, Office 2010, and Windows Server 2008 R2 in addition to deployment of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP.
Existing MDT users note: you will need to update your deployment shares. Make sure they are not currently in use or the upgrade will fail. Earlier reports of wrong files for download links have been resolved. You will need to uninstall Beta Update 1 before installing the final RTM of update 1. Check out Michael Neihaus’s blog for details and READ RELEASE NOTES.
If you use MDT with SCCM -
- new User Driven Installation deployment method. Gives target users more guided control over their deployment.
If you are a Light Touch user (USB stick, DVD or other)
- Office 2010 integration (still supporting older versions of office)
- Improved Driver importing to more accurately determine what OS version they are targeting.
Common for Both SCCM and Light Touch users of MDT 2010
- lots of fixes and improvements from Beta and feedback process
- continued support for older OS and apps (XP, Server 2003, Server 2008, Vista, Office 2007)
If MDT is new to you or if you are about to start looking into deployment of new desktops / managed desktops – you really owe it to yourself to refresh your skills with deployment tools. MDT is LIGHTYEARS ahead of what I used to do as an administrator rolling out Sysprep’ed images of Windows 2000 Pro way back when. I’d give my right arm to be able to have MDT available when I was in charge of that customer rollout.
IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
