Archive for category Operating Systems

Unattended installation of a Domain Controller


So far I’ve written about the Homelab hardware I’ve purchased and some basic configurations for my Storage and XenServers. And with the post on Sysprepping a Windows 2008 Server, I’m ready to build my Windows 2008 Test environment. With a (sysprepped) Windows 2008 Template for my VMs, I can easily clone the needed Servers and get my lab up and running and build a Windows Domain with multiple Servers and ServerRoles.

The first step in building my Windows Domain is to convert a Windows Server 2008 Member Server into a Domain Controller with the dcpromo.exe command.

 

This post is my own personal mental note for the unattended installation of my Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers.

 
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Sysprep Windows Server 2008


With Windows Server 2008 the newSID tool can no longer be used in combination with imaged deployment of servers. A deployment method that becomes even more important in Server Virtualization and Provisioned Infrastructures. Microsoft has improved the sysprep tooling by using XML config files and introducing the Microsoft Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) to create the unattended answer files. For Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, the WAIK version 1.1 can be downloaded here.

 

For Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 a different WAIK is to be used, which can be found here.

 

 

This post offers step-by-step instructions for the use of the WAIK to setup sysprep.

 

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