I’ve been working the past few days trying to figure out a way to capture and deploy images using Automated Deployment Services (ADS) within Virtual PCs. ADS is a set of technologies that facilitates the rapid deployment of Windows Servers to “bare metal” devices. Any machine with a PXE compliant network card can boot to the network, contact the ADS server and have an “image” of the Windows Server operating system deployed to it automatically. You can also use the same technology to manage many servers from a central location.
In the process, I discovered some issues concerning the PXE support (or the lack thereof!) in the Virtual PC emulated network adapter. Trying to find a bootable floppy that would act in place of a PXE NIC and boot the Virtual PC from the network so that I could use it with ADS, I found www.bootroms.com. This site, run by Argon Technology, contains all sorts of PXE and NIC related hardware and software – a pretty cool little find. One of their products is a PXE boot floppy for both Virtual PC and VMWare Workstation. Well worth the small fee they’re charging if you’re looking to do something like this. I still haven’t gotten ADS working properly, but should have everything up and running tomorrow. I’ll post my findings to the Virtual PC Tips and Tricks section on my site when I do…