Experiences with the Windows 2000 Remote Installation Services at DESY Reinhard Baltrusch

RIS - What is it ? The Remote Installation Services (RIS) are elements of the Windows 2000 IntelliMirror management technologies. They make it easier to perform a Windows 2000 Professional installation over the network. With RIS it is not only possible to produce installation images out of the original setup files, in addition you can make an image of a ready configured workstation with all the installed applications on it. This kind of images can be used for the recovery and for the cloning of specific installations.

Requirements for using RIS Pre-Boot eXecution Environment (PXE): –Client network adapter with PXE-based boot ROM or –Client network adapter supported by RIS boot floppy disk DHCP-Server: –must be authorized in the Active Directory –can be installed on the same server like RIS DDNS-Server Active Directory (Domain Controller ): –prestaging clients RIS-Server: –more than 2 GB diskspace on a NTFS-formated, non-system partition

RIS-Server Components - Services Boot Information Negotiation Layer (BINL) –answering PXE-clients requests, verify credentials against Active Directory, applying policy and configuration settings to the client Trivial File Transfer Protocol Daemon (TFTPD) –used to download the bootloader and the screens of the Client Installation wizard (CIW) Single Instance Store (SIS) –SIS filter driver –SIS Groveler –linking file duplicates to reduce required disk space on the volume used for storing RIS installation images

RIS-Server Components - Tools Remote Installation Preparation Wizard (RiPrep.exe) –to produce an installation image complete with operating system configurations, desktop customizations, and locally installed applications Remote Boot Floppy Disk Generator (Rbfg.exe) –to gernerate a disk with PXE-emulator for some non PXE network adapters Client Installation Wizard (OSChooser) –different editable screens in OSCML-format (HTML 2.0 like)

Client Installation Wizard – Welcome.osc

RIS-Operations Remote OS installation (CD-based image) –slipstreamed Service Pack/Hotfixes –using different unattended answer files for the same image –integrating new drivers (OEM-folder) Remote OS installation (machine-based image) –with different applications –special configurations for the organization Remote BIOS-update installation Remote Virusscan Remote Recover etc.

Related Tools RIS Menu Editor (3COM) –publishing tools for managing and troubleshooting SetupManager (MS) –generate RIS specific unattend answer files

Our Situation at DESY RIS and DHCP on the same Server Clients started with PreBoot-Floppy Non Microsoft-DDNS-Server (Bind 8.xx) at least english and german OS-version are necessary, other languages optional (multilanguage version ?) DHCP only for the the start process of the client, after installation the client get another IP-address if RIS is suitable for DESY more than one server is needed for loadbalancing and redundancy

RIS Configuration – New Clients

RIS Configuration - Images

RIS Configuration - Prestaging

Group Policy Configuration

DHCP Configuration - Bootfile

Advantages of using RIS good methode for a first rollout quick changes of configuration possible machine specifc installation images are using the files of the cd-based standard images automatic SID changing, sysprep is not needed

Disadvantages of using RIS ISA- and PCMCIA-network adapter not supported only one partition possible, the whole harddisk will be formated at the beginning of installation server versions are not installable over RIS Remote Installation not as quick as other imaging programs like Powerquest DiskImage or Norton Ghost

Related Documents Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Deployment Planning Guide, Chapter 25, Microsoft Press Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Administrator‘s Companion, Chapter 24, Microsoft Press Microsoft Windows 2000 TCP/IP Protocols and Services Technical Reference, Chapter 15, Microsoft Press Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Resource Kit, Chapter 5, Microsoft Press Microsoft Windows 2000 Server TCP/IP Core Networking Guide, Chapter 4, Microsoft Press Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Distributed Systems Guide, Chapter 24, Microsoft Press Microsoft Windows 2000 Server: Technical Guide to Remote Installation Services, White Paper Microsoft.