MDX sources

Dear reader, since my last posts i informed you about MDX and its workings.
in this post i proudly present the MDX sources.
In the link at the bottom of this post an .MSI can be found that will install MDX on a system. the .MSI will install the MDX script, the readme and the manual
The installation has been tested on Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008 R2. here is the readme:

---

Welcome to MDX
This application is written in PowerShell, to successfully start it you need to have powershell (version 2.0 and up) installed on the machine you're installing to
At first launch your settings will not reflect the settings of your deployment environment. please take your time to set the settings of MDX. refer to the manual for detailed information and usage of MDX and its settings.
On PowerShell 2.0 some parts of MDX will not work; for instance the MDT Settings Extra Apps will not show when using PowerShell 2.0.
To get things started PowerShell needs to have its execution policy set to remotesigned or lower because this script is NOT signed. please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee176961.aspx for more information about PowerShell signing
MDX will be installed to C:\Program Files\MDX by default, feel free to change that is you want to but always check its working after this.
MDX works with a few tools locally to get fully started. in the installation MSI some of these files are incorporated, they will be installed to its default locations. the extra files are:
    - MDXIcoon1.jpg
    - Manual MDX.docx
    - Readme.txt
PsExec from the PStools must be installed on the system, preferably on a path location from your SET.
link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896649.aspx

The MDTDB from Michael Niehaus also is a MUST, the installation points to the C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\MDTDB directory so you can best copy the module to that path.here is the link to Michaels blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2009/05/15/manipulating-the-microsoft-deployment-toolkit-database-using-powershell.aspx
MDX’s registry entries are set in the installation of the MSI, they can be changed in the settings tab of MDX.
MDX will connect to machines through WMI, for this mechanism to work in Windows Firewall enabled machines the following rule must be enabled in the network location profile
   
    - Windows Management Instrumentation (DCOM-In)
    - Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI-In)
Also MDX will try to ping machines; for this to work the following rule must be enabled on firewalled machines:
    - File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-In) (when using IPv4 traffic
    - File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv6-In) (when using IPv6 traffic
Last but not least: for the remote starting via PSExec the - Remote Desktop - User-In must be opened.
PsExec itself will require a litetouch user account that has to me member of the AD group "Remote Desktop Users"
For Wake on LAN to work the used Network segments must not prohibit WOL broadcasts. please do keep in mind WOL broadcasts cannot traverse Routers, so one MDT server can only service as much network segments it is connected to.
PXE control will only work under specific conditions. please refer to link: http://www.ithastobecool.com/2009/08/17/zerotouch-for-mdt-2010-without-sccm/
to get a clear understanding of this subject.
Happy deploy-ing
Bas Huygen
negyuh@xs4all.nl

---

I hereby would like to thank the following technical documents and its writers:

• Michael Niehaus
• Mark Russinovich
• Andrew Barnes

Furthermore i would like to thank the following Colleagues for support and testing:

• Barry Mes
• Ylber Tahiri

---

Download the MDX installers here:
  - x86: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=12B72EEE2C1F9871!2587
   -x64: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=12B72EEE2C1F9871!2588
Please note! this installer nor the PowerShell script has been signed; Smart screen filters will warn you about that fact! 
I am still working on a valid certificate…
The MDX manual can also be downloaded separately: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=12B72EEE2C1F9871!2589
I fully understand that this is the first version, feel free to download this installer and use it, when you will find a bug or think MDX should definitely use a new feature; feel free to contact me at:
mdx@xs4all.nl
Happy deploying and till next time.

MDX technical design

Hi folks, as promised i present the next part of my MDX posts. This time i will elaborate on the technical part of MDX as well as give you, the reader, a view of how  OS deployments are done; the MDX way.

MDX design; technical facts

MDX is build in PowerShell, the GUI is designed in SAPIEN’s Primal Forms Community Edition and the application is programmed in Microsoft’s own PowerShell ISA. the script counts around 3000 lines of code of which roughly 2000 lines are accounted for by the GUI. the script is divided in 15 Functions and 6 sections.

The general idea of the applications is: unification and simplification of MDT and accompanying tools to an end-to-end deployment solution.

Architecture

MDX is designed around the functionality of a few components:

• Microsoft’s MDT
• MDTdb.psm1 PowerShell module by Michael Hiehaus
• Mark Russinovich’s PsExec.exe
• Microsoft’s WDSUtil.exe

Here is the graphical representation of the design

MDX has a few sections that do the work. each section does a part of the total solution; for example there is a section in MDX that accepts input from the GUI checks its validity and, if verified, adds or modifies a corresponding computer item in MDT- in its database. another section does communicate with PzExec.exe and adds the needed variables to the tools to get a deployment started.

How does MDT accomplish end-to-end automated deployment?

The ‘secret’ of MDX is the way all under laying components are ‘orchestrated’ to make a ‘deployment symphony’ …. the way MDX does this is as follows:

• MDX controls the MDT database (which is crucial for end-to-end automated deployments) via PowerShell
• MDX takes variables from the UI and combines it with preconfigured components in MDT and other used tools
• MDX manipulates a computer object from the MDT database in such a way that it is deployment ready
• MDX adds ‘non standard’ items or features to the preconfigured building blocks like: for example: add a few applications to the deployment of a certain computer and adds a user account as local administrator to the same deployment as well
• MDX controls the WDS PXE server and thus controls who may- and may not boot to PXE and do a deployment via the network
• MDX can directly fire a preconfigured computer to do a deployment.

What is to be expected from doing deployments with MDX

Apart from the fact that MDX takes away the direct interaction with MDT, MDX will give the User direct control over all building blocks of the deployment chain from a single GUI. the user can start off with a computer name, check the settings and modify them and fire of the deployment to the machine.

One important thing to realize is: MDX will help the user to select ALL settings and set them without the possibility of human error (like typing). MDX eases these tasks by presenting a simple but effective UI that will help de user select those things needed MUCH faster AND easier than when he- or she would do manually in MDT itself. as a bonus it eases the management of tools like WDS or the start of MDT deployment in the traditional way.

The next post will present a real world example of deployment with MDX. till next time.

Introducing MDX

The last weeks is have not published anything since i was working on an IT solution i am introducing here on this page.
The next posts i will elaborate and present the code of my application, this is part 1: the introduction:
MDX stands for MDT Deployment eXerience. and it is a solution targeted at Microsoft OS deployment with MDT. So you can ask me; what does it do and, even more important, what does it add to MDT since that is quite a mature OSD solution in itself. my answer will be: MDT indeed is a very great OSD solution but it has its drawbacks. let me mention a few of them:

• The interface of MDT is quite cumbersome in respect to manipulating individual computer deployments.
• MDT does not have any functionality to automatically start a deployment on a client
• MDT needs ‘start-up media’ to get a deployment running like a CD or USB stick, although MDT can deliver a distribution via the network, it does not have any mechanism to control PXE servers

Because of these (and many more) drawbacks i decided to develop my own ‘shell’ around MDT and address these items.

So what does MDX do?

since i always think images speak louder then words I'll show you the interface.

As you can see the Application has its own GUI, in it there are a few input sections-, output sections and some buttons to get the whole thing running. MDX was built in PowerShell, the code for the GUI was generated by SAPIEN’s Primal Forms Community edition
MDX can do the following:

• On input of a computer name it will try to fetch a MAC address of the particular machine, if found it will use it to add- or find this machine in MDT and attach OSD properties to it to get it deployed
• MDX will show Computer information when the machine is online; this can be quite handy when you are to be migrating existing computers from say Windows XP to Windows 7 or 8
• MDX has a direct link with Microsoft's WDS servers, with this link it can control PXE boots of WDS clients
• MDX can wake a machine with Wake On LAN with one push on a button
• MDX can start a deployment remotely with the use of PS Exec.exe (a fine piece of toolkit developed by Mark Russinovich), with this it can completely automate MDT deployments to clients.
• MDX can add extra applications to a individual OS deployment- as well ass add an account to the local administrators group.

Al together i think it will add some nice features to MDT or as a colleague remarked “this is real automation with budget (freeware) tools!”
Next post i will elaborate on the technical workings of MDX, if all goes well i will present a download link to the source code.
till next time.

Start MDT Litetouch Task Sequence remotely (psexec.exe revisited)

Recalling my blog of February 23 i used a PowerShell script to start a deployment of a MDT Litetouch task sequence remotely via the use of psexec.exe.

Addition sept13 2013: a GUI to wake machines is published here


This script pushes the litetouch.vbs script to the client using psexec.exe, as shown here.
Now after a few weeks i have had many tests with this script and i can tell you; it works! there are a few buts though!
Let’s look at the first version of the script:

---

$ErrorActionPreference = "SilentlyContinue"
Do {
Clear-Host
Do {$trgMachine = Read-Host("Give the machinename that has to receive a LiteTouch deployment (Netbios or DNS name are equally good)")
      If($trgMachine -eq ""){Write-Host "Please give a name"}
}While($trgMachine -eq "")
      psexec.exe -i \\$trgMachine -h -u DOMAIN\User -p Userpassword cscript.exe //B "\\MDTServer\Deploymentshare$\Scripts\litetouch.vbs"
           if($LASTEXITCODE -eq 0){Write-Host "All went well"}else{Write-Host "Something went wrong: " + $LASTEXITCODE}
      $goOn= Read-Host("Another machine? (y)")
}while($goOn -eq "y")

---

this script will work quite well on older type of clients that are not to choosy about security (Windows clients older then Windows Vista) but on clients from Vista and above this script will only work when a user is logged on to the console; running it when no user is logged on will not result in very good deployments and running the script (started with a user account in the script) while an other user is logged on will also not do the trick. how do we solve this?
The trick is an option of psexec –i , this option calls an interactive process, when no SessionID is provided, psexec will run interactively in the console. when you enter a SessionID it will run in the provided session.
What i did is this: i took a function that checks for active sessions on the target machine, when no session is found mstsc is called to setup a session to the machine. In this session the deployment will run.

---

# thanks to http://adamstech.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/how-to-properly-pause-a-powershell-script/
Function Pause ($Message = "Press any key to continue . . . ") {
    If ($psISE) {
       # The "ReadKey" functionality is not supported in Windows PowerShell ISE.
        $Shell = New-Object -ComObject "WScript.Shell"
        $Button = $Shell.Popup("Click OK to continue.", 0, "Script Paused", 0)
        Return
    }
    Write-Host -NoNewline $Message
    $Ignore =
        16,  # Shift (left or right)
        17,  # Ctrl (left or right)
        18,  # Alt (left or right)
        20,  # Caps lock
        91,  # Windows key (left)
        92,  # Windows key (right)
        93,  # Menu key
        144, # Num lock
        145, # Scroll lock
        166, # Back
        167, # Forward
        168, # Refresh
        169, # Stop
        170, # Search
        171, # Favorites
        172, # Start/Home
        173, # Mute
        174, # Volume Down
        175, # Volume Up
        176, # Next Track
        177, # Previous Track
        178, # Stop Media
        179, # Play
        180, # Mail
        181, # Select Media
        182, # Application 1
        183  # Application 2
    While ($KeyInfo.VirtualKeyCode -Eq $Null -Or $Ignore -Contains $KeyInfo.VirtualKeyCode) {
        $KeyInfo = $Host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("NoEcho, IncludeKeyDown")
    }
    Write-Host
}

#Main procedureDO {Clear-Host
    # clear DNS to have the latest ip adresses    Ipconfig /flushdns
        #enter a machine name
        Do  {$TargetMachine = Read-Host("Please enter the name of the Machine")
            If($TargetMachine -eq ""){Write-Host "That's no name, please try again"}
            }While($TargetMachine -eq "") 
       # Test for respons of machine
        if(!(Test-Connection -Count 1 $TargetMachine)){ Write-Host "machine $TargetMachine is down"
             
               # Get the user session
               $loggedonuser = Get-WmiComputerSessions -computer $TargetMachine
                       if($loggedonuser.length -eq 0){write "No user is currently logged on `nChecking Operating System"
                            $OSType = (Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $TargetMachine Win32_OperatingSystem).Name
                            # checking the Operating System, if XP is found script version 1 can be used
                            # Else a RDP session will be started to be used by the litetouch.vbs script                            if(!($OSType -like "*xp*")){
                                    $logonrdp = $TargetMachine + " /admin"
                                   # a session will be setup to the machine i use a rdp file here                                    mstsc /v:$logonrdp "D:\PSScripts\Logon scripts\Default.rdp"
                                   # function pause is used to wait for the session to be fully running
                                    # thanks to http://adamstech.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/how-to-properly-pause-a-powershell-script/
                                    Pause
                }}}
      # Now a sessionID will be fetched to be used by psexec       Write-Host "enumerating sessions"
       $SessionID = gwmi win32_process -computer $TargetMachine -Filter "Name = 'explorer.exe'"
       psexec.exe /accepteula  \\$TargetMachine -h -i $SessionID.SessionID -e -u DOMAIN\User -p password cscript.exe //Nologo //B "\\Deployserver\Deploymentshare$\Scripts\litetouch.vbs"
      # Depending on the exit codes the script will notify the user on success or failure       switch ($LASTEXITCODE)
       {
           0                   {Write-Host "All went well"}
           1                   {Write-Host "No user is logged on to the machine"}
           6                   {Write-Host "Machine $TargetMachine is not available"}
           53                  {Write-Host "The machine is restarted into WinPE to be deployed"}
           5206                {Write-Host "the deploy wizard could not finish"}
           -2147467259         {Write-Host "Litetouch generated arrors, check OSDLogs"}
            1073807364         {Write-Host "The machine is restarted into WinPE or the migratie went wrong"}
           -1073741510         {Write-Host "The machine is restarted into WinPE or the migratie went wrong"}
           default             {Write-Host "Something went wrong, the error is: " $LASTEXITCODE}       } 
       Clear-Variable -Name OSType
$again= Read-Host("Do another machine (y)")
}while($again -eq "y")

---

i have tested the script on a lot of clients (XP and Windows 7 mixed), now you can service all these kind of Windows clients. till next time.

Start MDT Litetouch deployment remote

Hello again, i am back with a script that is quite handy for IT deployments done with MDT (any version would actually work with this script)
So Microsoft made MDT to be integrated with SCCM and, if done correctly, that combination is very powerful to deploy any kind of Microsoft OS to the enterprise, but what about the smaller clients, the ones who don’t have SCCM? MDT can be used on its own and Litetouch deployments can do the trick!
There is one little thing though that has not properly been addressed by the MDT development team (at least that's my opinion) and that is to hand us a way to get deployments started remotely from the Administrators console. As always with these kind of things i am not the only one so on TechNet a thread was started to get this issue addressed.
Handed solutions were two: present a batch file with a link to the litetouch.vbs and use psexec.exe to get a deployment started remotely. (Psexec is a formidable tool, part of the sysinternals Pstools toolkit)  i have used the first one many times before but its drawbacks are: most of the time you have to log on to the remote deployment system. the Psexec solution however is really nice, that's what i used as a base for this script.
                                
figure 1 the batched solution                                                         figure 2 the Psexec solution
The main difference is: the batched (first) solution is one in which the clients have to fetch the litetouch scripts by themselves, the second Psexec solution is the other way around, in this case you bring the litetouch.vbs script to the client.

---

$ErrorActionPreference = "SilentlyContinue"
Do {
Clear-Host
Do {
$trgMachine = Read-Host("Give the machinename that has to receive a LiteTouch deployment (Netbios or DNS name are equally good)")
    If($trgMachine -eq ""){Write-Host "Please give a name"}
}While($trgMachine -eq "")
psexec.exe -i \\$trgMachine -h -u DOMAIN\User -p Userpassword cscript.exe //B "\\MDTServer\Deploymentshare$\Scripts\litetouch.vbs"
   if($LASTEXITCODE -eq 0){Write-Host "All went well"}else{Write-Host "Something went wrong: " + $LASTEXITCODE}
 
$goOn= Read-Host("Another machine? (y)")
}while($goOn -eq "y")

---

Some explanation: the main line of the script is the line starting with psexec.exe it will run the command starting at cscript.exe on the remote machine (designated by $trgMachine) under credentials of the given –u Username and (optional) –p password (this gets sent in clear text so you can omit the –p option and give a password any time in the command shell when running the script) then there are some Do – While loops will restart the script when an empty hostname is found and at the end of a run. the option -h in the psexec line will suppress any UAC prompt (provided you started the script with an account (the -u option) that has local administrator rights)
To use the script, make sure you have psexec.exe installed on a location that's in one of the path locations (usually C:\Windows\System32 is a good location)
have fun and see you next time