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Deploying multi-WIM, multi-disk image

Unanswered Deploying multi-WIM, multi-disk image

  • Friday, February 04, 2011 8:35 PM
     
     
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    We have a few high-end portable workstations for our development team to use. Said workstation contains two physical disks, one 100GB IDE and one 450GB SSD. The 100 GB drive (C:) is for the OS (Windows 7 Enterprise 64-Bit) and the 450 GB drive (D:) is for various pieces of software, SQL, and general file retention.

    I sysprepped and captured an image of C: and then used ImageX to capture D:, resulting in two different images. (Dev and DevRep, respectively.) Using ImageX's export command, I combined the two into a single WIM called "Dev_Feb2011.wim" with instance 1 being Dev and instance 2 being DevRep.

    I assume I can deploy this WIM relatively painlessly by using DISKPART on a new machine to create the proper partitions on the two disks, and then using the instances to deploy each instance as required.

    My question: How can this image be applied using MDT? I'm not simply dealing with multiple partitions; I'm dealing with multiple disks as well, only one of which contains the OS and is bootable. When glancing through an MDT TS, I don't see an option to declare the instance in the Install Operating System step, just the disk and partition.

    Has anyone else had to deal with something like this? Could I just add "imagex.exe /apply etc" steps to the TS?

    Edit:

    Or would it be easier to keep the two images separate and then just add an additional Install Operating System step in my TS, pointing to the second WIM?

    -Nick O.
     

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  • Saturday, February 05, 2011 12:08 AM
     
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    Assuming your DevRep image is the second part of the WIM, you need to modify your Unattend.xml to add Data-image. Here's an example of a possible solution.

    DataImage is inserted under pass WinPE/Microsoft-Windows-Setup_neutral/ImageInstall

    <ImageInstall>
 <OSImage>
 <InstallTo>
  <DiskID>0</DiskID>
  <PartitionID>1</PartitionID>
 </InstallTo>
 <InstallFrom>
  <Path>.\Operating Systems\Windows 7 x64\Sources\Dev_Feb2011.wim</Path>
  <MetaData>
  <Key>/image/index</Key>
  <Value>1</Value>
  </MetaData>
 </InstallFrom>
 </OSImage>
<!-- This is the part you need to add for data image -->
 <DataImage wcm:action="add">
 <!-- Not sure how SSD is recognized under Windows 7, assuming Disk 1, Partition 1 -->
 <InstallTo>
 <DiskID>1</DiskID>
  <PartitionID>1</PartitionID>
 </InstallTo>
 <!-- Full UNC path to image needed, MDT doesn't recognize ".\" when adding DataImage -->
 <InstallFrom>
  <Path>\\Full_UNC_Path\Operating Systems\Windows 7 x64\Sources\Dev_Feb2011.wim</Path>
  <MetaData wcm:action="add">
  <Key>/image/index</Key>
  <Value>2</Value>
  </MetaData>
 </InstallFrom>
 <Order>1</Order>
 </DataImage>
</ImageInstall>

    HTH.

     

     
  • Sunday, February 06, 2011 3:01 PM
     
     
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    For data images, I prefer to add an action to the task sequence rather than hardcode it in the unattend.xml, just having a vbscript running imagex apply to the D:\ drive (assuming the partition step creates the two partitions). You can still have the data index in the same wim as your os index, though I normally keep them in separate wim's.

    / Johan

     
  • Thursday, November 22, 2012 11:52 PM
     
     
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    For data images, I prefer to add an action to the task sequence rather than hardcode it in the unattend.xml, just having a vbscript running imagex apply to the D:\ drive (assuming the partition step creates the two partitions). You can still have the data index in the same wim as your os index, though I normally keep them in separate wim's.

    / Johan

    Hi Johan,

     Can you send some details?

    As

     
  • Monday, November 26, 2012 2:02 AM
     
     
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    Thanks, I found the solution and video series from http://www.youtube.com/alucardkakashi