In this week's lesson, we learned about working with system images. Microsoft has included several useful tools to create and manage image files that can be used while unmounted. This can be handy for many tasks. One task that quickly comes to mind is to use these apps to keep an existing image up to date by adding updated system drivers.
Image files can be created with resources from the Windows Automated Install Kit (WAIK). This kit includes the Windows PE environment, which is a stripped down version of Windows that facilitates creating images as well as other installation tasks. You can also use the AIK to create an unattended answer file to provide Windows with results to prompts in order for perform an automatic install.
Other tools include the Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool (DISM). DISM applies updates such as drivers, language packs or system updates to an existing image. This helps to keep images fresh and cuts down on the time needed to keep stored images current.
You can also use the Windows Deployment Services to load boot and install images onto a machine running Windows 2012 Server and then use those images to boot and install Windows from a PXE boot using the network card.
There is a great deal of extremely useful information here, keep it up, Microsoft!
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Lesson Six: Windows Installation
This week’s lesson focused on the various flavors of Windows 7 and 8, and the many new features that they contain.
Windows 7 has six different editions, ranging from a starter edition, through Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions. It’s necessary to use the Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate variants to join a domain and work in a corporate environment.
Windows 8 only has four different editions, Windows RT, which operates on the ARM architecture found in mobile devices, Windows 8 (base), Win 8 Professional, and Win 8 Enterprise. The Pro and Enterprise variants can be used in a corporate environment. Windows 8.1 has the same variants as Windows 8 and features much of the same features and restrictions as Windows 8.
The lesson then went on the discuss user migration between the various flavors of Windows. The system administration is a great deal of control over what is transferred and how that processes is managed.
Another big part of this lesson was the use of virtualization, which is the process of using one or more virtual machines from a physical computer. This has many possible benefits, such as being able to be used to leverage existing hardware to run tasks as if there were more than one machine available. It’s also possible to run a virtual machine with a different operating system than the one installed on the physical PC.
Another cool virtualization wrinkle is the use of virtual hard drives (VHD’s), which is a special file type that fools the machine into thinking that this file is a separate hard drive. It’s possible to use a fixed size, or a dynamic size that gets larger as more space is needed. This virtualization operates in much the same fashion as the virtualization implemented in Windows Server 2012.
Another fascinating lesson that I will be able to put to good use in my career. Looking forward to more next week!
Windows 7 has six different editions, ranging from a starter edition, through Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions. It’s necessary to use the Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate variants to join a domain and work in a corporate environment.
Windows 8 only has four different editions, Windows RT, which operates on the ARM architecture found in mobile devices, Windows 8 (base), Win 8 Professional, and Win 8 Enterprise. The Pro and Enterprise variants can be used in a corporate environment. Windows 8.1 has the same variants as Windows 8 and features much of the same features and restrictions as Windows 8.
The lesson then went on the discuss user migration between the various flavors of Windows. The system administration is a great deal of control over what is transferred and how that processes is managed.
Another big part of this lesson was the use of virtualization, which is the process of using one or more virtual machines from a physical computer. This has many possible benefits, such as being able to be used to leverage existing hardware to run tasks as if there were more than one machine available. It’s also possible to run a virtual machine with a different operating system than the one installed on the physical PC.
Another cool virtualization wrinkle is the use of virtual hard drives (VHD’s), which is a special file type that fools the machine into thinking that this file is a separate hard drive. It’s possible to use a fixed size, or a dynamic size that gets larger as more space is needed. This virtualization operates in much the same fashion as the virtualization implemented in Windows Server 2012.
Another fascinating lesson that I will be able to put to good use in my career. Looking forward to more next week!
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