Installing and Configuring MDT 2010 From Start To Finish

This post is intended as a guide for anyone who wants to install MDT 2010 along with Windows Deployment Services on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine in a home network.

As a ‘start to finish’ guide I will base this on a freshly installed Windows Server 2008 R2 installation and begin with installing AD Domain Services, DNS and DHCP  server roles before moving onto WDS  and installing and configuring MDT 2010. All on the same server.

Important: You need to configure a static IP address on your server and also make sure the the DNS server address is pointing to your server’s IP address (i.e. DNS server address should be the same as the static IP address you assigned to the server) . This will allow the installation wizard to install the DNS server along with the Active Directory Domain Services role on the same server.

I’ve broken down the entire process into several steps and provided the instructions for each step in PowerPoint slides. I’m purposely skipping the instructions on installing the server OS (which is no different to installing Windows 7) since I want to concentrate on the WDS and MDT side of things.

1 – Install the Active Directory Domain Services and DNS Server roles

The process of installing the Active Directory Domain Services role will also install the DNS server role as one process.

2 – Install the DHCP Server role

You may have a broadband router which provides DHCP services but you will still have to install the DHCP server role on your server.

3 – Install the WDS Role

After having installed the prerequisites (AD DS, DHCP and DNS) the next step is to install and configure the WDS role.

4 – Install MDT 2010

The final instructions here will install MDT 2010 and configure a deployment share, add a PXE-boot image and enable the multicast feature.

I hope this comes in use to someone.