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SCCM 2007 OSD and task sequences

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Another big change for OSD in SCCM 2007 is the introduction of the 'task sequencing' engine.  As the name suggests, task sequences allow administrators to define a series of steps that are followed in order for installing an image - such steps include capturing machine and user state, defining additional programs to run after the OS has been installed, whether or not to reboot the machine during image install, manipulation of bitlocker settings, disk partitioning, etc.  Once a task sequence is defined it is advertised to a collection of machines and will be installed either as an advertisement or through bare metal provisioning.  BDD 2007 contains a version of the task sequencing engine used in SCCM 2007 so if you want to see a preview of how this works, take a look at BDD.

Task sequencing is a feature of OSD and is found under the OSD node of the administrator console but isn't limited to just working with OSD.  Customers have asked for a long time for the ability to control the execution order of advertisements.  Historically the answer to this was to use dependent programs - but this approach doesn't address every situation.  The task sequence engine is the answer to this request and allows very specific and granular control over what executes and when it executes.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 16, 2008
    Hi Steve, Can we stop the task sequence at a specific step and then restart the task sequence from that step? Regards, Chirag

  • Anonymous
    October 16, 2008
    What specifically are you trying to accomplish?  Yes, there are a couple of ways I can think of but really depends on what you are trying to do Steve

  • Anonymous
    July 08, 2010
    hi Steve, can we how to do the OSD without advertising the Task sequence. please help me in understanding it. how does it work? regards, Him

  • Anonymous
    July 08, 2010
    You can't do OSD without a task sequence - the task sequence trives the process.

  • Anonymous
    July 08, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 01, 2011
    Can you push a task sequence used to deploy bitlocker more than once? We are implementing bitlocker but having issues with the deployment. Each time we attempt to push the sequence again if it fails we are never able to successfully do so (we have to reimage the machine). Do we need to uninstall SCCM agent in order to push the task sequence out again?