BDD 2007 - TechNet Magazine article worth reading
One of my fellow Microsoft Services consultants from the UK Adam Shepherd, has just had an article published in TechNet Magazine.
The article provides advice on how to scale BDD. This includes how to to support multiple databases, use DFS-R and how to leverage WDS.
The advice is based on learning's from real world so you should find it practical. If nothing else it should help you further understand just how flexible BDD really is.
So go out there and read this article and remember to keep an eye out for future articles from Adam, they will be good!
PS. It is worth having a good look around TechNet Magazine as there are a number of good deployment articles in previous issues.
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Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Hi Or, YOu are correct about the DFS share thing. That is why DFS should only be used as a replication tool. You must create shares on each server yourself. Thanks, BenAnonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removedAnonymous
January 01, 2003
This should not be the case. Does the Ztigather.log file should a value for WDSServer? Thanks, BenAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Hi Greg, You could assign the deployroot value based on the deployment type. For example: [Settings] Priority=DeploymentType,Default [NewComputer] Deployroot=%WDSSERVER%share$ You do not need to specify a value for refresh as will have already established a connection to the server to start the script. Thanks, BenAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Hi Steve, MDT offers a bunch of incremental improvements over BDD 2007. It also provides support for ConfigMgr and Server deployment. If you are choosing between BDD 2007 and MDT then I would strongly recommend using MDT. Thanks, BenAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Yes it is set in Windows PE 2005. This is done by the ztigather script. Thanks, BenAnonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removedAnonymous
January 01, 2003
That is correct. The article assumes that the deployment share is on the server as the WDS server. It is done this way because you cannot discover the DFS root. DFS-R is simply used for replication purposes. Thanks, BenAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Yes, but Refresh's WinPE will not understand it as it will be a DFS share during PrePost install phases Or.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I've read it and it's a good Practice, however, as WinPE can't discover DFS Root, it uses the %WDSServer% Var instead, as mentiond in the article, but what happens when you're using REFRESH (No WDS) ? Or.Anonymous
October 28, 2007
So how can we use the %WDSServer% variable and support new OS installs and Refreshs?Anonymous
October 28, 2007
Thank Ben, We are currently using DFS-R to replicate the deployment point to a share at each site, however we need to kick off the upgrade/refresh remotely and we are using LTI. Which means it will have to happen in Windows as we do not have the remote access cards. If we kick off the Deployment wizard in Windows the %WDSSERVER% is not populated because there is no PXE/WDS. If there another way to populate this variable? ThanksAnonymous
November 07, 2007
Is %WDSSERVER% set in OSD's Winpe2005, and if so, where ?Anonymous
November 07, 2007
Looking at the ztigather.log revieles that the Deployroot is set to %WDSSErver%Share$ instead of \ServerNameShare$ Is this normal ?Anonymous
November 07, 2007
The problem is that the OSDPACKAGEPATH is set to the main BDD site and not the RemoteAnonymous
January 10, 2008
Hi, whats the difference between BDD 2007 and 'Microsoft Deployment' ? Cheers all