In this post I will be showing you how to installation of MDT and integrating it with SCCM. MDT ie. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit which is also a standalone tool, can be used to deploy operating system on its own (without using SCCM). This can also be integrated with SCCM. We will first discuss why it is important to integrate MDT with SCCM
Why we need to integrate MDT (Microsoft Deployment toolkit)
MDT once installed, can be integrated with SCCM to provide more rich features related to operating system deployment. One of the main reason we wanted to integrated MDT is its rules engine which can be configured through customsettings.ini to generate lots of inbuilt MDT variables. This is not only limited to inbuilt variable but also provides a huge scope of creating your own variables. Few of the inbuilt variables are:
IsLaptop,IsVM,SerialNumber,Product,Model,UUID,IsUEFI,IsOnBattery and so on.
Hence based upon the these variables, you can provide certain tasks such as generating hostname based upon laptop/desktop/Virtual Machine / serial number etc, can perform TS steps specifically related to make/model/laptop etc. There are huge possibilities depending upon what you need.
List is too big, if you are interested going through detailed MDT variables list, you can follow Toolkit Reference for the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.
Installation of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
Latest version of MDT Package can be downloaded from here.
Latest version is 8456 at the time when this blog was written.
This is a small file of approximately 20 MB, and is available in msi format for
both 64 and 32 bit version.
MDT package can be installed on server, whether Server OS or client OS, however recommended way is to install on Server as we are sure about availability time for the server OS.
For this installation purpose, I will proceed with the installation of MDT Toolkit package on SCCM server only.
Initiate the installation process by double clicking the MicrosoftDeploymentTookit_x64.msi.
Setup Wizard will be launch, click on next to continue installation of version 6.3.8456.1000.
Accept the terms and conditions policy and click on Next.
Under Custom Setup page, go with the default settings and click on Next.
Click on Install to begin the installation.
Once installation is done, you can verify that the software Deployment Workbench available when you click on start menu.
This is the MMC console of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit which can be launched and configured if we wanted to use MDT as standalone.
Integrate MDT with SCCM
We will now configure MDT with SCCM.
Click on Start menu and launch Configure ConfigMgr Integration located under Microsoft Deployment Toolkit folder.
This will launch the Wizard with auto populated information for:
- Install the MDT console extensions for System Center Configuration Manager.
- Add the MDT task sequence actions to a System Center Configuration Manager Server, along with Site Server Name and Site Code.
As I have installed MDT locally on SCCM Server, these values got populated automatically. If we are going this on any other server, provide the correct values. Click on Next to continue.
Confirmation page will appear, click on Finish to complete the process.
Verification of MDT Integration with ConfigMgr
- We can verify the integration process by launching SCCM console and navigating to \Software Library\Overview\Operating Systems\Boot Images
Right Click Boot Image and we can see new option available Create Boot Image using MDT.
- Navigate to \Software Library\Overview\Operating Systems\Task Sequences.
Right click Task Sequence and we have new option Create MDT Task Sequence.
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