Mapping network share

[AdsaM]

Hello All,

I have been evaluating Smartdeploy Enterprise over the weekend and am impressed with the results so far.

A quick question for you guys, is it possible to automate the mapping of a network share to the wim and ppk files rather than having to do it manually on each boot of smartpe? and how please.

I'm new to the PE environment and not very knowledgable in this field.

I work at our local Hospital as a techie and it is my role to manage the ghost images, We are currently looking for an alternative, this being the reason for the Smartdeploy Eval.

No doubt this will be my first question of a few in the near future as my eval period continues.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Stevie

[Erik]

Hello Stevie,

Glad to hear you are enjoying your product trial. If there is anything we can do to help please let us know!

It is possible to automate as much of the deployment process as you would like. We use unattended answer files that can be exported from the Deploy Wizard. With the answer files you can do everything from map a network share to zero touch deployment.

On the very last pane of the Deploy Wizard, there is an option to export an answer file. This will save an xml answer file based on all the selections you made in the Deploy Wizard. You can then use the Media Wizard to incorporate this answer file into your boot or offline media. Using an answer file in this way will pre-populate the Deploy Wizard, if you wish to fully automate the deployment you must take a few additional steps with your answer file.

Once you have thoroughly tested an answer file in attended mode, the following steps are required to enable full unattended mode:

1. Add mode=”Unattended” attribute to the <deploy_wizard> node.
   
   • i.e. <deploy_wizard mode=”Unattended”>
     

[*]Optional – Adjust the <unattend_delay> node to number of seconds to show warning message.

• i.e. <unattend_delay>120</unattend_delay>
  
• The default is 60 seconds if no value is present.
  

[*]Run the Media Wizard and include the updated answer file on boot or deployment media.

Note: The unattend delay serves two purposes; it provides a delay in order for the user to have the opportunity to cancel a deployment, and it provides a delay for required resources to become available such as networking. Setting the delay to only a few seconds is not recommended because it may cause inconsistent deployment behavior.

Again thanks for your interest in the product and if you need any additional support or information please feel free to contact us.

Thanks,

Erik

[AdsaM]

Thanks for the info Erik.

Will give it a try tommorrow when back at work.

Thanks again.

Stevie

[AdsaM]

Ok Next question

Today whilst building my amswer.xml, I have come across a slight issue.

Our domain name has a "-" within it's name. ie. bill-gates.nhs.uk which is returning as invalid.

If i remove the "-" to billgates.nhs.uk all is fine. But our domain has the "-" within its name.

Is there a workaround i could use ie placing the domain within quotes or is this a validation built within the software.?

Otherwise everything else is still going very nicely.

Thanks for any replies.

Stevie

[Erik]

Hello Stevie,

Unfortunately it looks like the hyphen is hard coded into the component as an invalid character. I have sent the issue over to our Dev team who will make the change to allow the hyphen, as it is a valid DNS character. This update will be added to the next release of SmartDeploy. We will be sure to let you know when it is available!

Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience,

Erik