Deploying Windows 10 from a DVD in a business environment is time consuming, while it may be very good for a one off installation of Windows 10 when you need to deploy images often there is a better way.
Deploying Windows 10 using Windows Deployment Services(WDS) with your windows server 2012 R2 server is the way that you can speed this up. WDS is a Microsoft server technology for deploying network based installation of Windows.
To use WDS the following requirements will need to be met:
- You must be a member of an Active Directory domain – see our guide on deploying Active Directory, DHCP and DNS
- DNS must be running on the network
- DHCP must be running on the network
- You will need a user for deploying images
How to install and configure WDS
Sign into the server and open the Server Manager if it does not open automatically.
Click the Manage button in Server Manager and select Add roles and features.
On the Select installation type page, select Role-based or feature-based installation and select next.
Select your server and click next
On the Select server roles page, tick Windows Deployment Services box, a box will pop up saying Add features that are required for Windows Deployment Services? click the Add Features and click next.
On the Select features page, click next.
On the role services page, make sure both Deployment Server and Transport Server are ticked and click next.
On the Confirm installation selections page, click the install button.
When the installation process completes successfully, click the Close button and go to the Server Manager screen.
Now the Windows Deployment Services role is installed.
Configuring Windows Deployment Services
In the Server Manager click the Tools button in the top right hand corner and select Windows Deployment Services, this will open the WDS console.
Expand servers, right click on your server name and click Configure Server.
Read over the Before you begin screen and confirm that your configuration meets the requirements and select next.
On the Install Options page you will need to select integrated with Active directory and click the next button.
On the Remote Installation Folder Location, select the location where you want to keep all of that Windows Images and configuration files and select next. – The Remote Installation Folderis recommended not to be on the system partition of your server, you should also make sure there is enough storage space to store these files as you add more to it.
On the PXE Server Initial Settings page Select the appropriate setting that you want. We are going to use respond to all client computers(known and unknown) because we want to be able to deploy images to any computer on the network.
Tick the box Add images to the server now and select Finish. This will now pop up with the options to Add images to your WDS server.
Adding Images to Windows Deployment Services
Insert your Windows 10 DVD into the server(or mount the ISO image for a Windows 10 installer to your VM if you are using a Virtual Machine)
We will now add the install.wim and boot.wim file to WDS from the Windows 10 installation media.
The boot.wim file is a Windows PE image that you boot from a client computer to install an operating system
Inside of the Windows Deployment Services pane expand out your server name in the left hand side, right click on Install Images and select Add Install Image…
Name your image group and click the next button.
Click browse on the Image Files page and navigate to your DVD drive, go to the sources folder and select install.wim
Click open and select next.
This page will give you the Available images, your installation media may have more than one image available, select whichever ones you want to be able to deploy and then click next.
On the summary page, click next. This will now take a little while to check the integrity of the images
Once that is finished you will be able to look inside of the Install Images folder and see you image group, if you select your image group it will have the install images that you have added in there.
Now all you have to do is add the boot.wim file. To do this right click on Boot Images, and select Add Boot Image, then run though the same steps that you did when adding your install.wim except select boot.wim.
Now you will be able to deploy Windows 10 using WDS!!
Just use PXE boot and you will be able to install Windows 10 using your new WDS Server.
