Foreword

Deployment and Administration of new Operating Systems on new or reused hardware for most organizations of size is a continuous effort. Training is required for new technologies, new staff and the end users of the hardware as well. Change is everywhere and in the business of software, change comes fast. In the operating system deployment space, change has been slower than most other technology areas. Until the introduction of the Windows Vista® operating system, the deployment process had been essentially the same since at least the release of Microsoft® Windows NT®. With the release of Windows Vista and the Windows Server® 2008 operating system, many changes were made deep in the core yielding several benefits requiring we re-examine our old processes and tools and be willing to unlearn some of them. Many of the old tools will not work anymore. Some of our reasons why we deployed the way we did until now will have been forgotten, or just no longer applicable. Letting go of old habits and familiar tools is often difficult. Hardware standardization should be a goal for most organizations, but is still too often not achieved and like software it also changes fast so we must learn to deal with it efficiently. Our job is to manage all this change and look for more efficient ways to do what we do. Fortunately, the majority of the change we will manage will be recognized as a definite improvement.

The changes to Windows Vista in the administration and deployment areas are mostly invisible to the end user. That is a good thing. The end user should focus on leveraging productivity improvements and not the nuances of how to install or administer an OS. After all the OS is only there to serve the applications that run on it.

All OS images require periodic updates. We now have methods available to incorporate those updates in the core image, or apply them just-in-time to an offline OS so that it can always boot up the first time secure and with the right drivers or language. The different techniques available allow us to choose how much network bandwidth or media capacity is best for us.

The Windows Vista OS core is now language neutral, allowing us to install and uninstall the languages of our choice. Drivers, languages and updates can be applied to OS files (images) that have not yet been deployed to end users. These driver, update, and language configuration capabilities allow us to design a true single image that can be distributed and updated worldwide if need be, and customize it at the final destination, with very high levels of automation. We no longer need to maintain multiple images for different HAL types, language types, and rebuild, capture, test and redistribute our images for each change in hardware or security. We can now safely choose to update our core images just a few times over the image lifecycle. Fewer changes in the core image help reduce changes impacting the administration cost of those OS configurations.

Microsoft has released tools such as the Windows® Automated Installation Kit and solution accelerators such as the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008, Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, 2007 Office System Security Guide, Data Encryption Toolkit, Security Compliance Management, and Windows Vista Security Guide to help both do-it-yourself shops and services partners. Additional resources like this book summarize and bring to light the various tools and steps to learn how to deploy and administer Windows Vista along with the real world experience of the authors. Armed with these resources your organization can better approach deployment and administration as the continuous process that is.

Mike Lewis

Architect Client/Server Deployment

Microsoft Corporation