Owner's manual

Another deployment share could be used to provide a full-featured deployment across the organization, but is secured

so that it is only available to the IT department. Even a third share could be configured with another select deployment

configuration and made available only to select groups or users to help facilitate a staggered deployment.

Windows Deployment Wizard

The Windows Deployment Wizard, also known as simply the deployment wizard, is the user interface through which

MDT is presented on client or target systems. It can be launched directly through network access to the deployment

share or it is the interface presented when launching MDT boot media. The deployment wizard is used to select

between task sequences to run on the client system and to provide any user interaction that wasn’t automated to

complete the deployment process. For example, the deployment wizard can request a computer name or to select

between time zones. It can also prompt whether to generate a backup of the computer before deploying the new

operating system and whether to encrypt the environment during deployment. An example of a deployment wizard

prompt is shown in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1. Windows Deployment Wizard Showing Prompt.

The experience provided by the deployment wizard is controlled by a selected task sequence and a configuration file,

named customsettings.ini. Customsettings.ini contains settings for technician prompts and supplied answers. For

example, automating the process of joining to a domain during deployment can be configured in customsettings.ini.

Editing and configuring the customsettings.ini file is shown in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5.

Connectivity to the deployment share is secured by Windows credentials to the network share. When the deployment

wizard launches, it will prompt the technician for user credentials each time it is run. However, it is possible to prevent

being prompted each time by storing credentials in a configuration file, named bootstrap.ini.