I'm in my Windows Deployment Services server, and I'm
going to add the Windows Deployment Services role. So I'm
going to go to Server Manager,
Add roles and features, and I get a wizard that pops up.
I'll click Next, and continue clicking Next until I get to my roles, and
I'll choose Windows Deployment Services. Choose to add the features, click
Next, and just continue until we get to Install.
Now I do want to leave the Role Services that you see here for Deployment Server
and Transport Server, because we only have the one server.
If you have multiple servers,
you can split those roles up, and click Install.
And the installation is complete.
I can now go into Tools and choose Windows Deployment
Services, and get started in my server.
Just installing the role for Windows Deployment Services isn't enough.
We have to go in and configure the server so it can get started.
I'm going to right‑click and choose to configure server. As you can
see, the "Services is not configured" warning comes at the top. I'm
going to click Next. Now we have the option for Integrated with Active
Directory or Standalone server.
If this server was a standalone server,
I could choose that, but then I would miss out on a lot of
the security and additional features I can get with
Integrated with Active Directory.
Since this server is a member of a domain,
I can go ahead and choose that and click Next.
Now I want to choose where I want to put the remote installation folder,
and this is going to be used by us when we boot up from a computer without
an operating system on it, so we can download the files needed in order to
install that custom operating system.
I'll just choose the default.
It's going to give me a warning about putting it on the
same volume as the operating system.
I'll just go ahead and choose yes and continue. Next, we have
the option for response by client computers.
You have the default, Do not respond,
Respond only to known client, or Respond to all client computers.
Obviously, the Do not respond is not what we want.
Ultimately, we want the client computers to get those operating systems, so
that's not the best option. Responding only to known computers adds
additional steps, and it doesn't always work right.
So really the best option here is to respond to all client computers,
but even if you don't know who they are, and to not
require the administrator approval.
So how do we keep this secure?
What we do is we put all this into its own subnet. Windows Deployment
Services does not work well by going from one subnet to another; it
requires access control lists in order for that to work.
So if you put this in its own subnet, no other computers are
going to be able to communicate with it anyway.
So, we'll go ahead and choose that option and click Next. Now it's copying
all the files needed for Windows Deployment Services. Next, I have the option
to add the images to the server, so I definitely want to do that. So I'll
click Finish, and a new wizard pops up.
It's asking for the image file. So I'll browse to that on my DVD.
It's going to be in the sources folder for Windows Server
2022 and also for older ones as well.
Here, we have the option to Create an image group, and this is a
really good idea because you can organize your images either by
departments such as Accounting, HR, IT, etc., or you can organize them,
say, by the version of Windows that you're putting on,
Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2019,
Windows 11, that kind of thing.
I'm going to choose that option,
but you can choose whatever works best for you, and I'll click Next. And I
like what I see there, so I'll go ahead and click Next, and now what it's
doing is it's copying all the images from my DVD.
There are two important W‑I‑M files, or WIM files, that are
needed for Windows Deployment Services.
One is going to be the Boot Images, as you see at the top of
the screen; the other is the Install Images.
The Boot Images are used basically for the computers to connect
into Windows Deployment Services, and then the Installation
Images is where we're going to create our custom images that can
then be used by our clients.
The images were added.
I'll click Finish. I can go to Boot Images, and we can see there's the
boot image that got copied over from our Windows DVD, and we can see
that's the Setup image. Now I can go to Install Images, and there's my
Windows Server 2022 installation image.
Windows Deployment Services is now ready to accept a boot image and custom images for automated deployment.