Active Directory/Documentation/WDS/Management

This section provides documentation and policy information for WDS server administrators and others on campus with an interest in the centralized WDS system. This includes lab administrators, custom image maintainers, and administrators of WDS servers outside of the centralized WDS infrastructure.

Documentation

• [[../Using WDS with WolfPrep|Using WDS with WolfPrep]]
• [[../WDS_NICDrivers| Troubleshooting NIC Drivers]]
• [[../WDS_Images| Images]]
• [[../Performance|Performance Documentation]]
• [[../Service Configuration|Service Configuration]]
• [[../Command Prompt Help|Help using the command prompt and useful commands in WDS]]

The following pages are intended as a reference to WDS server administrators. They contain no user documentation.

• Setting up a WDS server
• [[../Separating DHCP From WDS|Separating DHCP From WDS]] (also known as Cross-VLAN PXE booting to WDS)
• [[../Creating Bootable Discover CDs|Creating Bootable Discover CDs]]
• Image Management

Policies

Base Images

Base images are install images that are supported by the WDS administrators; they contain only a Windows installation and no other programs. It is recommended that WDS users begin making custom images from one of these base install images.

Not all base images will be displayed by default to WDS users. A number of infrequently-used images have been designated to be hidden from view by default, and users who want to make use of one of those base images will be required to request it be added to their image listing by contacting wds@lists.ncsu.edu.

The following images are base images. Entries shown in italics will be hidden from view by default:

• Windows 2008 Server Enterprise, x64
• Windows 2008 Server Enterprise, x86
• Windows 2008 Server Enterprise NO Hyper-V, x86
• Windows 2008 Server Enterprise NO Hyper-V, x64
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, x64
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Core, x64
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter, x64
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Core, x64
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Web, x64
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Web Core, x64
• Windows 7 Enterprise, x86
• Windows 7 Enterprise, x64
• Windows 7 Automated Install, x86
• Windows 7 Automated Install, x64
• Windows 7 No Domain Join, x64
• Windows 7 No Domain Join, x86
• Windows Vista Business, x64
• Windows Vista Business, x86

Image Listing

The image listing will be formatted to show any custom images available to the user first, followed by the base images (some of which may be hidden from view as noted in the Base Images section above), with any public images being available at the bottom of the list.

Custom Images

Allowances

All college IT units are allotted one guaranteed custom image slot. In addition, each department within each college is allotted one guaranteed custom image slot. If departmental IT staff are not using their slot, then the college IT unit is permitted to use that slot. Note that these are guaranteed numbers - space permitting, each unit may utilize additional custom image slots. However, if storage space becomes scarce, units with additional custom images may be required to reduce their usage so that other units may utilize their guaranteed slots.

Naming

In order to keep custom image listings sane, the following image naming convention will be required for custom images: <OU>-<PreferredName>, where <OU> is the OU prefix of the unit managing the custom image (examples: COEDEAN, CNR, ECE, OIT), and <PreferredName> is the name of the image as given by the unit managing the custom image.

Permissions

Once a custom image is added to the service, permissions will be automatically set on it so that only members of the unit's "Allow Imaging" group will be permitted to use the image. If additional permissions need to be assigned to the image, contact the WDS administrators.

Staging Area

The staging area of the deployment DFS share (\\wolftech.ad.ncsu.edu\deployment\staging) shall contain, at minimum, the following subfolders:

• Images
• Drivers
• Boot

These folders shall be used in a temporary manner for the drop-off and pick-up purposes of users and WDS service admins. The images and drivers subfolders are self-explanatory; the boot subfolder is for boot images. To preserve space, the images and boot folders will be regularly cleaned after processing these images.

Other

These external links may be helpful as references.

• Create WinRE Image
• Longhorn Server Deployment Technet Forum
• Vista Deployment Technet Forum