I have been playing around with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) on Windows Server 2012 R2 and decided I need to my client machines to perform a PXE boot instead of booting from a CD, which takes quite awhile. Configuring Windows Deployment Server is a fairly easy process, especially if you all ready have a bootable WIM created from using MDT. These instructions assume you have already setup MDT on your server and that your server is a member of a Windows Domain. The basic process is as follows:
- Add the Windows Deployment Server (WDS) Role from Server Manager on the server you wish to boot from. You will need to restart the server after this role is added.
- Open a command line to initialize your server with the command wdsutil /Initialize-Server /RemInst:”C:\DeploymentShare\boot”, assuming you are using the default directory from your MDT installation. If you encounter an error during the initialize step, you may need to issue the command wdsutil /Uninitialize-Server so that you can fix the error and then try to initialize the server again.
- Next you will add the WIM you wish to boot from with the command wdsutil /Add-Image /ImageFile:”c:\DeploymentShare\Boot\LiteTouchPE_x64.wim” /ImageType:Boot.
- Check Services to make for sure the Windows Deployment Services Server is running.
Assuming everything worked correctly, you should know be able to connect a computer to the same network as the server and PXE boot from the client to the server without the need of a flash drive or optical disk. You may need to enable PXE boot on the client machine, or change the boot order of the devices.
Microsoft has a web page that includes all of the syntax for the wdsutil command available at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771206.aspx.