MDT 2013u1 Company Selection

Question

I work for an MSP, and we support 7 companies, each with their own application requirements, and each company can have either Windows 7, 8, or 10 installed based on what they request. I wanted to do company based installs in MDT, ie selecting company, OS, and limiting available applications to install based on company selection, without increasing management overhead too much.

I had a few ideas of what to do but not really sure how to proceed. My first idea was to create a task sequence and selection profile for each company, then add a page in the wizard for OS selection.

I saw in the UDI Wizard Designer that there is a page called VolumePage to do basically what I was looking for. I haven't used the UDI Wizard Designer before so I'm not overly familiar with it, but from what I can tell at least the VolumePage uses integration with SCCM. All references I've found to configuring the VolumePage have been using MDT along side SCCM, and the server I manage only has MDT 2013u1 not SCCM. Procuring SCCM is not an available option for the time being.

I had also considered setting up a selection profile for each company, and a task sequence for each OS. I would have to add in a page for Selection Profile in the wizard to do this, or configure something in the database, both of which I'm not very familiar with. I have SQL Server Express 2008 installed and set up a database for MDT, but I haven't configured any settings in the database since I have limited DB experience.

I know the most simple method would be to create task sequences for each company and each OS, but I don't want to have 28 task sequences, and it seems like there has to be a way to do this without having so many task sequences.

Is there any way to set this up using only MDT and the DB?

Answer 1

Are you well versed in MDT? If so then read the TL;DR section at the bottom.

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To make a boot image automatically select a TaskSequence, you need to know your task sequence ID.

You can get that from the task sequence list:

After you know your Task Sequence ID you will need to create (or modify) the TaskSequenceID property in the bootstrap.ini file of your deployment share to reflect the TS ID that you want to automatically select.

Right click on your deployment share and push properties.

Now create (or change) the TaskSequenceID property to equal your TS ID. You can place it in the [Default] section or the Architecture ([x86], [x64], [IA-64], etc...) section, if you use it.

Example of configuration text: TaskSequenceID=EXAMPLE1.

Now push the OK button to save your settings and close the properties window.

Next, Right click the deployment share and click the "Update Deployment Share" option.

Now completely regenerate the boot images. I use this option as it deletes the previous images and rebuilds from scratch, giving you the smallest and freshest images possible. Although in theory you should be able to use any of the other options.

Click next to the confirmation and it will start rebuilding the boot images.

Now navigate to your Deployment share folder and open the Boot directory. You can find your deployment share path by looking at the deployment share name in the workbench.

In the Boot folder, copy the LiteTouchPE_x86.wim file and the LiteTouchPE_x64.wim file to some other directory E.G. C:\Temp\LTI_ZTI\WIMs\

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Now do the same above process with TS IDs. Eventually you will have a boot image for each task sequence. You will be able to boot to the image of your selection and it will automatically run the provided task sequence.

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Links:

MDT 2010 ZTI: https://scriptimus.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/mdt-2010-fully-automated-lite-touch-deployment/

MDT 2012 ZTI: https://scriptimus.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/lti-deployments-skipping-deployment-wizard-panes/

ZTIflow.wsf and Customsettings.ini advanced stuff: http://myitforum.com/myitforumwp/2013/03/14/a-look-at-ztigather-and-the-customsettings-ini-file/

Custom Wizard Pages: https://itmicah.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/create-a-custom-deployment-wizard-pane-for-updates-mdt/

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TL;DR

Make a boot image with the TaskSequenceID property of bootstrap.ini pointing to the TS ID that you want to use. Do this for each TS that you want to have automatically selected.