Book Image

Mastering the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit

By : Jeff Stokes, Manuel Singer
Book Image

Mastering the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit

By: Jeff Stokes, Manuel Singer

Overview of this book

Topic The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) provides a comprehensive collection of tools, processes, and guidance for automating desktop and server deployments. It considerably reduces deployment time and standardizes desktop and server images. Moreover, MDT offers improved security and ongoing configuration management. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit is the official supported method of creating and customizing Windows images for deployment. Description: Starting from scratch, this book walks you through the MDT setup, task sequence creation, and image deployment steps in detail. Breaking down the various MDT concepts, this book will give you a thorough understanding of the deployment process. Beginning with imaging concepts and theory, you will go on to build a Microsoft Deployment Toolkit environment. You will understand the intricacies of customizing the default user profile in different versions of Windows. Driver handling can be a challenge for larger organizations; we’ll cover various driver concepts including mandatory driver profiles. ]Other important topics like the User State Migration Tool (USMT), configuration of XML files, and how to troubleshoot the USMT are also discussed in the book. We will cover the verifier and Windows Performance Toolkit for image validation scenarios. Furthermore, you will learn about MDT web frontend implementation as well as how to utilize the database capabilities of MDT for deeper deployment options. We’ll wrap it all up with some links to resources for more information, blogs to watch, and useful Twitter handles.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Mastering the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

About the Reviewers

Florian Klaffenbach started his IT career in 2004 as a first and second level IT support technician and IT salesman trainee for a B2B online shop. Later, he moved to a small company, working as an IT project manager, planning, implementing, and integrating industrial plants and laundries into enterprise IT. In some time, he changed his path to Dell Germany. There, he started from scratch as an enterprise technical support analyst and later worked on a project to start Dell technical communities and support over social media in Europe and outside of the US. Currently, he is working as a solutions architect and consultant for Microsoft Infrastructure & Cloud, specializing in Microsoft Hyper-V, file services, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, and Microsoft Azure IaaS.

Additionally, he is active as a Microsoft blogger and lecturer. He blogs, for example, on his own page, Datacenter-Flo.de, or Azure Community Germany. Together with a very good friend, he founded the Windows Server User Group Berlin to create a network of Microsoft IT pros in Berlin. Florian maintains a very tight network with many vendors such as Cisco, Dell, and Microsoft and communities. This helps him enhance his experience and get the best solution for his customers. Since 2016, he is also the co-chairman of the Azure Community Germany. In April 2016, Microsoft awarded Florian the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Cloud and Datacenter Management.

Florian has worked for several companies, such as Dell Germany, CGI Germany, and his first employer, TACK GmbH. Currently, he is working at msg services ag in the role of senior consultant in Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure. He has worked on the books Learning System Center App ControllerMicrosoft Azure Storage Essentials, and Mastering Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, all by Packt Publishing. He is also currently working on Mastering Cloud Development using Microsoft Azure, by Packt Publishing.

I want to thank Packt Publishing for giving me a chance to review the book. I also want to thank my employer and my girlfriend. Especially her, for not killing me because I spend so much of my spare time on the community and work.

Brian Mithen is a systems and network administrator with the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library in Kansas. He maintains group policies and MDT deployment strategies for over 400 computers in use by the staff and public. When not at work, he breeds and shows American Bullies on the A.B.K.C. circuit with his kennel 8-Bit Bullies.