Windows 2003 x64 and RDP Deployment

[Bob Pace]

Hi All

I have a customer that has 25 AMD blades they want to deploy Windows X64 on these.

I have found out that RDP 2.2 does not support this version of the O.S. I had thought a fall back would be to manually install and then image but am now being told that imaging is not supported either.

Does anyone have any ideas about the best way to approach this install.

Thanks

[Steven Clementi · Accepted solution]

Bob:

Imaging is technically "not" supported, but it does work. As reported in an earlier posting, many customers are imaging x64 blades without many issues, though it is a manual process.


For making the image... run the sysprep manually (x64 sysprep). It might be good if you have an answer file to include. I may have one somewhere. Will post it if i do.


The steps I took were...

1. Complete the system (OS, Patches, utilities, etc)
2. Reboot to clean up any outstanding issues
3. Check logs for errors and correct before sysprep. Clear logs when done. Reboot if you have to.
4. Clear event logs and run Sysprep, select Factory.
5. Server will shutdown. Reboot and sysprep will automatically run again, giving you the option to audit. (not necessary, but good if you want to test)
5. Select Reseal. sysprep does it's thing and shuts the box down.
6. Run the "read" job on the RDP server and then boot the box up. You may need to modify the job to NOT reboot the box since you are doing it manually.
7. Watch the console, when you get prompt for "f12 to PXE boot", hit F12 to force it to pxe boot.
8. Rdeploy should run as well as the system and array capture jobs, if you included them. I found that I really did not need them as I was deploying the image on the same type of servers, bl25's and bl45's.
9. Once complete, deploy the image to other servers.

Worked without a hitch. The new imaged servers came up, detected hardware (where necessary), re-generated names, etc.

Other than this, imaging should be supported in RDP 2.3, or the next available version.


Steven

[Bob Pace]

Thanks Steven

We are going on-site Thursday to work this issue.

I will let you know how this works

Bob