Introduction to Deployment Services
Is This for You? This document set is written for information technology (IT) professionals who are responsible for designing and implementing a server deployment service in enterprise environments. The reader of this document set is expected to have an understanding of its technical details; however, service-level expertise is not needed to follow the enterprise-level discussions and understand the decisions that are made.
On This Page
 | Introduction |
| Blueprint |
| Planning Guide |
| Build Guide |
| Operations Guide |
Introduction
An automated server deployment service can reduce the time required for installing and configuring servers, and enhance the overall quality of each deployment. Automated deployment ultimately leads to a reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) through reduced deployment and operational support costs. The reliable deployment of software onto servers is required for hosting enterprise services. A natural solution involves completely automated computer builds. However, such a solution usually involves significant development costs. Usually, a solution that uses a mix of automation and manual tasks yields the best return on investment (ROI). The best approach is to first automate those tasks that are more prone to human error to reduce troubleshooting costs and to produce a more reliable and repeatable computer build. Next, automate mundane repetitive tasks to increase the number of computers that can be simultaneously built and reduce the required operator skill level. Once these tasks have been automated, more automation can enable the organization to support more services and provide newer support services to their clients.
Further information about Windows Server 2003 and deployment services may be found at the following URLs:
| • | Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit: |
| • | Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit: |
Blueprint
This blueprint provided the information required to understand how to plan a deployment service solution for an enterprise organization. The design process detailed in the “Service Design” section can be used to create a comprehensive design that can fulfill the needs of the enterprise. With the additional references and guidelines provided throughout this blueprint, the reader should be confident in their ability to envision and plan a deployment service using Windows Server 2003.
Planning Guide
This guide provided a detailed breakdown of the choices that were made in the deployment service design process. The guide provided information on how the design process presented in the Deployment Services Blueprint can be used to build a fully functional and well-documented deployment service solution using Windows Server 2003. This process was followed for the CDC scenario in the test labs while taking into account the overall requirements of our enterprise scenario and its defined network topology.
Build Guide
The deployment services in the CDC scenario were key to the successful building of the entire lab environment. During the numerous test passes the deployment services were used to save many hours of manual installations and configurations. The tools that were used to deploy the servers in the WSSRA environment successfully deployed the required bits on all the servers, renamed them accordingly, configured the necessary network connections, and installed the required components. The overall deployment was accomplished as detailed earlier in this guide.
Operations Guide
This guide helps the readers understand the extent of operations guidance that is available for the deployment services discussed in WSSRA. This guidance has been tested in a WSSRA environment and the project team deferred to this guidance as the authoritative source of operations content.