PXE Archives - Thomas Maurer

Jul232014July 23, 2014August 24, 20193 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

Add drivers to SCVMM Bare-Metal WinPE Image

Posted in Cloud, Hardware, Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Private Cloud, System Center, Virtualization, Windows, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Work

A long time ago, I wrote a blog post on how you can use System Center Virtual Machine Manager Bare-Metal Deployment to deploy new Hyper-V hosts. Usually, this works fine, but if you have more modern hardware, your Windows Server Image may not include the network adapter drivers. Now, this isn’t a huge problem since you can mount and insert the drivers in the VHD or VHDX file for the Windows Server Hyper-V image. But if you forget to update the WinPE file from Virtual Machine Manager your deployment will fail, since the WinPE image has not network drivers included it won’t be able to connect to the VMM Library or any other server.

You will end up in the following error and your deployment will timeout on the following screen:

“Synchronizing Time with Server”

If you check the IP configuration with ipconfig, you will see that there are no network adapters available. This means you have to update your SCVMM WinPE image.

First of all, you have to copy the SCVMM WinPE image. You can find this wim file on your WDS (Windows Deployment) PXE Server in the following location E:\RemoteInstall\DCMgr\Boot\WIndows\Images (Probably your setup has another drive letter.

I copied this file to the C:\temp folder on my System Center Virtual Machine Manager server. I also copied the extracted drivers to the C:\Drivers folder.

After you have done this, you can use Greg Casanza’s (Microsoft) SCVMM Windows PE driver injection script, which will add the drivers to the WinPE Image (Boot.wim) and will publish this new boot.wim to all your WDS servers. I also rewrote the script I got from using drivers in the VMM Library to use drivers from a folder.

$mountdir = "c:\mount"
$winpeimage = "c:\temp\boot.wim"
$winpeimagetemp = $winpeimage + ".tmp"
$path = "C:\Drivers"
 
mkdir "c:\mount"
copy $winpeimage $winpeimagetemp
dism /mount-wim /wimfile:$winpeimagetemp /index:1 /mountdir:$mountdir
 
dism /image:$mountdir /add-driver /driver:$path
 
Dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:$mountdir /Commit
publish-scwindowspe -path $winpeimagetemp
del $winpeimagetemp

This will add the drivers to the Boot.wim file and publish it to the WDS servers.

After this is done, the Boot.wim will work with your new drivers.

Aug202012August 20, 2012August 21, 20122 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

SCVMM 2012 Hyper-V Bare-Metal Deployment on Cisco UCS C200

Posted in Cisco, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Private Cloud, Server, System Center, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, UCS, Virtual Machine Manager, Virtualization, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Work

System Center Virtual Machine Manager brings a cool new feature called Bare Metal Deployment. This feature allows deploying new Hyper-V hosts via Out-of-Band Management (IPMI or SMASH) with the Virtual Machine Manager. In my lab environment I use Cisco UCS C200 M2 servers as my Hyper-V servers but this guide will also work with servers from other vendors such as HP, IBM or Dell.

Deployment Process

SCVMM boots up Bare-Metal Server via OBM
Send PXE Boot requests
WDS asks SCVMM for authorize PXE boot
SCVMM approves
Boot Windows PE
Run pre GCE scripts to configure Raid and other settings
Copy the VHD from VMM Library
Get drivers
Run post GCE scripts to do additional configurations
Doing post configuration
Domain join
Adding server to the resource pool

Dec062010December 6, 2010July 7, 20192 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

Create an OS Image in Windows Deployment Services (Capture Image)

Posted in Microsoft, Software, Windows, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Work

Here I will show you how you can simply create a new Image in WDS (Windows Deployment Services). You can use this to create own Images for your Servers or PCs or update existing Images.

Add Capture Images to your WDS
Update your Computer or VM with the latest Software.
Use Sysprep to generalize the Machine. You can find sysprep.exe in C:\Windows\System32\sysprep
After the Reboot boot into PXE and boot the Windows Capture Image
Now you can use the Image Capture Wizard
Choose which volume you want to capture if you have just one partion in your installed Image the Volume would be D:\ (C: is the booted Windows PE from the Windows Deployment Service)
Now you have to choose the name of the WIM file and the location, before you can upload it to the WDS Server you have to save it on a local partion. After that you can choose your WDS Server and the Image Group you want to upload the image after the Volume is captured.
Now the capturing process will start
After the capturing process is finished and the image is uploaded you can find the Image in the Image group on your WDS Server
Now you can Rollout this new Image