Microsoft IT moved to in place upgrade. Improved user experience with a simplified installation process. Minimized productivity impact with an upgrade rollback scenario. Reduced costs by requiring no image management. Windows 1. 0System Center 2. R2 Configuration Manager SP1. Situation. Less than a year after. Windows 8. 1 Update, Microsoft IT deployed Windows 1. Increasingly rapid release cycles have made it necessary for Microsoft IT to. Microsoft IT plays a. First and Best program at Microsoft. As the First and. Best customer, Microsoft IT partners with product teams early to test the software. Microsoft IT. gained useful insights into the company wide deployment of operating systems. Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8. Windows 1. 0. Recent acquisitions have given Microsoft IT even more insight about. Microsoft customers face when deploying a new operating. Opportunities to improve the upgrade experience. A number of issues were. Windows 1. 0 deployment. Complex environment. Most computers at Microsoft were running Windows 8. Windows 1. 0, although some computers were still running Windows 7 and Windows 8. A recent Microsoft acquisition came on board with most of its computers running Windows 7. The acquisitions environment featured hundreds of line of business LOB applications that were developed to run on the Windows 7 client and its own System Center Configuration Manager infrastructure. They also relied on non Microsoft solutions, including third party endpoint protection, and a different VPN solution. Microsoft was in the process of assessing and migrating that environment when the Windows 1. Increasingly rapid release cycles. The cadence of product releases is increasing. Microsoft IT needed to build a scalable approach to migrate its global and distributed user base to Windows 1. User readiness. When Microsoft IT deployed Windows 7, users had multiple options for joining different domains and organizational units, setting up additional accounts, and provisioning their hard drives the way they wanted to. Those options were great for developers, but were complex and challenging for other users. Non technical users would go to the installation point and not know what to do. It became crucial to make future upgrades easy for Microsoft IT to deploy and for users to install. Empowering users and maintaining productivity. Rapid deployment processes also required creating a strong user experience that enables users to be productive, with rollback scenarios, self service capabilities, and streamlined infrastructure that supports easy adoption. Remote users. About 2. Microsoft IT plans to do a deployment. Remote users may have either good internet connections or metered connections. Small offices without distribution points. During one recent acquisition, Microsoft IT was faced with the challenge of improving a less than optimal corporate network installation experience. The existing System Center Configuration Manager infrastructure buildout only supported small packages and updates through Configuration Manager. Distribution Points were not placed in all office locations, so Microsoft IT had to provide a good experience to about 5,0. Advantages And Disadvantages Of Evolutionary Model In Software Engineering there. Learning from past deployments. With each operating system deployment. Microsoft IT think about how to streamline future. Figure 1. Operating system deployments at Microsoft. Windows 7. Microsoft IT used a custom imaging. Windows 7 deployment, which was primarily developed to install. BIOS on devices. Microsoft IT used task sequence. BIOS and the drivers as part of the installation image used. Windows 7 company wide. It took nearly a year to get 8. Windows 8. When deploying Windows 8, Microsoft IT. For Windows 7, remote. USB drives, CDs, and DVDs. To. improve the installation experience for both remote and on premises users. Microsoft IT used the publicly available Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and created. Windows Installer front end application that streamlined and simplified. The application was designed to pick the best deployment solution. Microsoft Azure file service. Adoption rates improved because it was. However, there was no significant decrease in help desk. Windows 8. Windows 8. The product group engaged Microsoft IT to begin Windows 8. Windows 8 deployment was complete. To streamline deployment and promote adoption, Microsoft IT collaborated with the product group to enable in place upgrade as a pilot for Windows 8. Using the in place upgrade eliminated the need to build a complex zero touch deployment image. Microsoft IT didnt have to create packages to deal with data migration or application reinstallationeverything just worked. The upgrade had a 9. Microsoft IT saw a 3. Microsoft IT was able to deploy 9. Solution. Windows 1. Users at Microsoft running Windows 7, Windows 8, and. Windows 8. 1 were upgraded to Windows 1. In place upgrade is the preferred deployment method for all but newly provisioned. Microsoft. An early adoption community helped. Microsoft IT set its deployment target goal at 9. Windows 1. 0 release. From an end user perspective, installing. Windows 1. 0 with the in place upgrade was very quick and easy. Users. applications and data remained in place during the upgrade, and the small. Microsoft IT developed its deployment approach for Windows. Better address compatibility. Use the participation of early adoption communities. Reduce the cost and management of deployments. Improve user readiness and the user installation experience. The Windows 1. 0 upgrade was made possible by using the. Operating System Deployment OSD feature in System Center 2. R2 Configuration. Manager SP1 Configuration Manager. It uses the same setup engine that has. Windows 1. 0 update to hundreds of millions of consumer. Maintaining data, applications, and settings and configurations. In place upgrade maintains all user data. Microsoft IT. did not need to create or manage additional configuration scripts. For example. Microsoft IT did not need to create or manage a script to maintain Power. Management settings that had previously been implemented to help reduce power. Those settings remained in effect after the operating system was. Windows 1. 0. Mandatory vs. Configuration Manager including Service Pack 1 and R2. User initiated pull installations optional. Microsoft IT chose to use a self service method, where users initiate the upgrade from the Software Center at their convenience. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Wikipedia. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit MDT formerly Business Desktop Deployment2 is a computer program that permits network deployment of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. OvervieweditMDT can help build an automated installation source for deploying Windows operating systems from Windows 7 and Windows Server 2. Windows Deployment Services WDS or System Center Configuration Manager SCCM. Device drivers, Windows updates and software can be included with the build. All the software intended for installation Operating System, drivers, updates and applications are added to a pool of available software and packaged into deployment packages. The Operating System and drivers to be included with this package are selected, and the administrator password, owner information, and product key are specified. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit generates a custom Windows PEPreinstallation Environment image that allows client machines to install the assembled deployment packages over the network from the MDT server. This Windows PE disk image can be burned to and booted from a CD, or booted with Windows Deployment Services. When selecting the package to deploy, software that has been included in the pool may also be selected for installation. OperationeditThe Microsoft Deployment Toolkit MDT supports three types of deployments 3 Zero Touch Installation ZTI, Lite Touch Installation LTI, and User Driven Installation UDI. ZTI is a fully automated deployment scheme in which installation requires no user interaction whatsoever. UDI deployments require full manual intervention to respond to every installation prompt, such as machine name, password or language setting. ZTI and UDI deployments both require a Microsoft System Center infrastructure. ZTI deployments require a persistent network connection to the distribution point. LTI deployments require limited user interaction. An LTI deployment needs very little infrastructure, so it can be installed from a network share, or media using either a USB flash drive or an optical disc. See alsoeditReferenceseditHow to Install ADK and MDT on Windows Server 2. External linkseditMicrosoft deployment resources.