Microsoft Deployment Toolkit for Windows 7
By
Patrick Nelson
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) is one of Microsoft’s
Solution Accelerators.
It is a toolkit for deploying the
Windows 7 operating system. You can also use it on Windows
Server 2008 R2.
MDT 2010 is the latest version. It contains unified tools
for desktop and server deployment and it shortens deployment
time.
There is improved security and management.
MDT uses what Microsoft calls Zero Touch Installation
(ZTI) deployments by leveraging System Center Configuration
Manager 2007 and Windows deployment tools.
New features in MDT 2010 are only supported for Lite
Touch (LTI) deployments, however.
Windows 7 can be
deployed using either ZTI or LTI.
New in the 2010 release is access to deployment shares from
all of the network, and replication of files and settings
across organizational boundaries and sites.
The latest version also introduces an improved user
interface for the management of drivers, operating systems,
applications, packages, and task sequences.
Windows PowerShell is brought in to automate MDT 2010
with a command-line interface.
There are two versions of MDT 2010.
Support for Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 is removed.
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 is
required to deploy Windows 7.
Deploying Windows 7 with MDT 2010 also requires the use of
Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) 2.0 tools.
User
State Migration Toolkit (USMT) version 4.0 is also required.
USMT is included with Windows AIK for Windows 7. LTI
deployments support USMT 4.0 hard-link migration and shadow
copy amongst other USMT features.
Hard-link migration is a way of saving user state by
creating a snapshot of current user data files before
reinstallation. Shadow copy archives files.
Windows Pre-installation Environment (PE) version 3.0 is
also required to deploy Windows 7 using MDT 2010. It comes
in Windows AIK.
Other Windows 7 support in MDT 2010 is for the Windows 7
default disk partition configuration, which is like the
BitLocker Drive Encryption disk configuration.
In a In a Windows 7 deployment, MDT 2010 also supports the
refreshing of PCs that use
BitLocker Drive Encryption
without decrypting the target hard disks .
Numerous other new features are included. Microsoft has a
document you can read at its MDT download area which you can
reach by clicking
here.
The MDT download area also has release notes for download
which have a full list of known issues.