End to End .Wim Image Deployment with WDS

We want to take a look at the end to end creation of a .wim image and the deployment of this image via Windows Deployment Services.

This will require several key components to be in place for your environment.

• Microsoft Windows AIK – Windows 7, Server 2008
• A master workstation that you wish to clone
• A Server to host Windows Deployment Services
• Network infrastructure to accomplish the network copy and supply other services between the server and workstation

The first step on the front end of our deployment process is to create the Windows PE environment that will serve to boot the workstation into the PE environment as well as partition the drives via diskpart, copy the .wim image down to the drive, apply the image, copy the boot files that Windows 7 expects to the partition and then booting the machine into its sysprep stage of installing.

In order to accomplish the above mentioned tasks, we need to have the Windows Automate Installation Kit installed which provides the tools to create and customize .wim images which is a requirement for this process.

Add as a preferred source on Google

Google is updating how articles are shown. Don’t miss our leading home lab and tech content, written by humans, by setting Virtualization Howto as a preferred source.

About The Author

Brandon Lee

Brandon Lee is the Senior Writer, Engineer and owner at Virtualizationhowto.com, and a 7-time VMware vExpert, with over two decades of experience in Information Technology. Having worked for numerous Fortune 500 companies as well as in various industries, He has extensive experience in various IT segments and is a strong advocate for open source technologies. Brandon holds many industry certifications, loves the outdoors and spending time with family. Also, he goes through the effort of testing and troubleshooting issues, so you don't have to.

See author's posts