Question

Configuring images in Windows Server 2012 - Part 1

Answer 1

It is well known that making an installation of an operating system is time consuming, especially when we are talking about a server environment where we must be quite meticulous in the initial configuration and in having the equipment the least amount of time off the air.

For this we can use this tool to save time and have a much more stable installation from the beginning.

What are Windows Images?

It is a format that has Windows to store the operating system in an image, including software that we would need to install after the operating system is installed, this allows us to upload updates released later to the generation of the installation media, drivers and other components that another way they should be downloaded in each server that we install.
The format used for this is WIM (Windows Imaging file format) and it brings us the following benefits:

• Multiple ways to do deployment, either via DVD, USB, Network, WDS, etc.
• Updatable, we can manipulate the images before installing to make sure we have all the components up to date, or if we need to modify roles, permits, for this we can assemble the image and modify it according to our requirements.

Configuring the image

To achieve configure an image we will use the tool that runs on command line Deployment Image Servicing and Managment (DISM) , with this tool we can manipulate the operating system without installing it so that we can act at our convenience without affecting a equipment that can be productive to us.

The actions that we can execute with this tool are the following:

• Activate and deactivate roles and characteristics.
• Add, remove and list system updates
• Add, remove and list Drivers or System Drivers
• Add, remove and list Windows Image packages in format. appx

Mounting the image

When mounting the image we associate it with a directory, so that we can browse its directories with either the file explorer or the command console, once mounted we can use Dism.exe to perform the corresponding operations.
A WIM file can contain multiple operating systems, which have different characteristics so we can prepare a range of versions that fit our multiple servers.

Adding Drivers

Once assembled the image we can work on it, one of the most common tasks when working with images is to add Drivers or Drivers, to achieve this we must use the instruction / Add-Driver.
When using this we must specify the path of the file. inf required as many times we must add dozens of drivers or drivers is not efficient to do it one by one, so we have the option to do it recursively using the / recurse parameter which gives us the ability to load all the content of the corresponding folder.

Let's see an example of how to do this:

Dism.exe / image: c: \ mount / Add-Driver / driver: c: \ drivers \ / recurse

Additionally we have two more options, which are:

• / Get-Driver , this option allows us to list all the drivers added to the image
• / Remove-Driver , this option allows us to remove any driver that we have added to the image, it is important to note that we can not eliminate any of the drivers that already come in the installation average published by Microsoft, only those added to the image by us they can be removed

With this we finish the first part of our tutorial, in the next installment we will see how to add packages with updates, and how to build the already modified image.

The second part of this tutorial can be found here:
Configuring images in Windows Server 2012 - Part 2

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