By Orin Thomas
Labcasts are combinations of traditional screencasts and virtual labs. The first part of the labcast involves watching a presentation on a particular technology, including a demonstration of how to use its functionality to perform common tasks. The second part of the labcast involves performing the same steps yourself, so that you get a hands-on feel for the information in the lesson you’ve just viewed.
This labcast, Introduction to the Business Desktop Deployment 2007 Tools, explores the Business Desktop Deployment 2007 tools, which can help simplify the deployment of Windows Vista in your environment. The first part of the labcast presents information about the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) tools. The exhibit below shows the Windows System Image Manager, which is one of many components available in the kit.
By watching the labcast you will learn what Windows PE 2.0 is and how you use it during the deployment process. The labcast also covers how you can customize the Windows PE 2.0 environment to best suit your organization’s needs. The exhibit shows a list of Windows PE 2.0 components that can be added to a Windows PE image.
The labcast introduces Windows Image (.wim) files and explains their purpose. You’ll be shown how to manipulate .wim files using the ImageX utility. You’ll see how to mount content using the utility, allowing you to then manipulate images using Windows Explorer. The exhibit shows how the winpe image is mounted using the read and write option so that it can be modified.
The labcast finishes by covering other tools that are available in the Deployment Workbench. The exhibit shows the tools from the Deployment Workbench.
A big advantage of the Business Desktop Deployment 2007 tools is that they are all available for free download from Microsoft’s website. For those of you looking towards Windows Server 2008, you’ll be happy to know that the WDS role, included with all versions of Windows Server 2008, allows for the automatic deployment of WIM image files to multiple clients using multicast technology. So not only will you learn about Business Desktop Deployment 2007 tools by watching this labcast, you’ll also have a primer on how to set up.
To access this labcast, navigate to the following address: Introduction to the Business Desktop Deployment 2007 Tools (Part 2)