Installation & Deployment / Windows Imaging Format
Subtitles of the Movie
Now before we go too much further I want to dig into this Windows Imaging Format because this thing is really, really huge. The Windows Imaging Format again it's basically ghosting but this is sector based copying. Now what's really cool is with sector based copying we can do some really neat things with these images. Microsoft's WMI or Windows Imaging Format is basically a technology built around single instance container files and these are supported by a Windows Imaging Format, API OK, which is an application programming interface which means that you can build software applications to look at these files and to manipulate them. So what you're going to start to see is third party applications and products, there's actually one in the Automated Install Kit that will let you do this already. But I can view the contents of a Windows Image File offline and I can edit the contents of an image file offline. Now that is huge. That means that I can take an image of part of my server disks and then I can store that image somewhere and then I can use a software utility to then open that image and actually edit it. Now, hold on to all that for second, let's talk about what this let's us do. By making these images and them having a single instance container files that their in, this is how Microsoft is pushing all versions of Server 2008 on one disk. So you'll get one DVD for Windows Server 2008 and whether you're installing data center or Enterprise or Standard or whatever, whatever version you're installing, Web Edition, it's all going to be on that one disk. You're basically in the install based on what you choose and the product, you put in you're telling it which image to copy or to deploy onto your particular disk. Now, let's talk about the SIM, the System Image Manager, this is one of those software tools that I talked about a few minutes earlier. This allows you to actually access these Window Image Files. Now what are the advantages of all this? First of all the faster deployment, if you've ever used a ghost program, it is fascinating, I'll never forget the first time I saw this. A guy talked to us, he's talked about this new idea called ghosting and they call it disk cloning back then and we thought yeah sure we've heard all this before its going to be great and we watched an install that used to take almost an hour, take about maybe 12 to 14 minutes. I don't remember, it was unbelievable, we were just in shock that, that had happened that way. What's really cool with the Windows Imaging Format is we have easy management of these images. Now here's what's really cool, since we can edit these images, I can take an image of a server and then a service pack can come in, I can apply the Service Pack to that image. Understand I don't have to rebuild the system off of that image, apply the service pack and re-image and all this sort of stuff. OK, this is absolutely huge, I can just simply add the Service Pack changes to the image and the image is ready to deploy. I can create and deploy images on my own, the Image X tool from the Windows Automated Installation Kit will take care of that and I can download that kit from www.Microsoft.com. Now there's a tremendous amount of flexibility in this whole idea of using images. It's now possible to apply a WIM that will not overwrite existing files. OK, so that means that I can write an image on top of an existing installation and it will simply add changed file and it'll add the new files to it. OK, it won't overwrite existing files. So, you can see Microsoft headed some really cool places with this stuff, OK so you need to go out and read up on this. Now, do you have to know this to install Windows, no. Is this something a good administrator should understand going forward? Absolutely, there is some cool tricks here to really separate yourself from the other guys out there and to really be able to do some cool things when it comes to Server Installation, deployment and all that sort of stuff OK? So get your arms around these kinds of tools and this technology and you can really differentiate yourself out there in the real world.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Microsoft Windows Server 2008 |
| Author: | Mark Long |
| SKU: | 33911 |
| ISBN: | 1-934743-96-8 |
| Release Date: | 2008-09-10 |
| Duration: | 6.5 hrs / 70 lessons |
| Captions: | Available on CD and Online University |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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