Migration and Deployment: Free Tools for Windows Deployment – and a light touch deployment demo (Part 2 of 19)

At 7:00 AM on Tuesday, February 5th, 2013, Kevin Remde posted Part 2 of 19 in the Upgrade and Deployment Blog Series that focuses on some free tools for Windows Deployment. There are usually multiple options for deploying a new Operating System – manual installation by physically visiting each computer, fully automated installation (zero touch installation) or some form of semi automated installation (light touch installation). 

The manual method is straight forward – I walk around to every computer and start the setup from a DVD or USB thumb drive and then answer every question on the setup wizard and babysit the entire installation process. This works okay when you only have a few computers to deal with, but a nightmare if you have thousands.

The Semi-automated method and fully-automated methods are similar. In both methods, I would create a scripted (unattended) installation of Windows 8 and possibly even the applications. Once I have this, I would use a mechanism to start the installation going. Free tools such as the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) can help with a semi-automatic deployment and for fee tools such as System Center 2012 Configuration Manager can help with a fully automated install.

In Kevin’s post, he explains how MDT can be used and also provides a nice demo. Please read his post here: https://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinremde/archive/2013/02/05/free-tools-for-windows-deployment-migration-and-deployment-part-2-of-19.aspx.

Harold Wong