By Patrick Nelson
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) is one of Microsoft’s Solution Accelerators.
It is a toolkit for deploying theWindows 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.
The versions are based on hardware type and come in x64 or x86 hosts.
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.
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