Provision Windows hosts with Foreman

Introduction

wimaging a set of scripts to prepare WIM images and templates for Foreman to provision Windows hosts. Most of the time official Microsoft deployment tools are used; mostly dism.exe.

All relevant configuration files like unattend.xml are rendered by Foreman and downloaded at build time.

Features

Linux style installation using http:// or ftp:// installation media
No extra servers like WDS needed - all relevant settings can be configured in Foreman directly
Official Mircosoft utilities are used for all relevant setup stages making it easy to add (future) operating systems
Driver installation during build time
Support for localization settings (like time zone, locale, UI language)
Optional domain join including target OU
Optional local user creation
Support for Foreman's root password using Base64 encoding
Correctly report finished host building
Optional software installation and user tasks at the end of the build (like installing puppet ect)

Prerequisites:

The list requirements for using Foreman, all of them are not covered by this guide.

A working Foreman version 1.8+ installation (obviously), capable of net booting clients along with a working DNS / DHCP infrastructure
Currently, Safe Mode Render must be disabled in foreman
A utility Windows VM or physical host to prepare the WIM images (Microsoft likes the term Technician Computer)
A file server serving http and/or ftp protocols; fast machine recommended for production
Installation media for each Windows version
Driver files (.inf) you want to inject
A VM / bare metal machine to test your setup (start with VMs ;)

Getting started with wimaging

The tasks can be broken down in two steps:

1. Configure wimaging and create WIM images

2. Configuring Foreman

Script Reference

Provision work flow

An outline of the process to better understand the tasks witch need to be done. Basically, there are three phases:

Phase I

Create a new host in Foreman.

Simple as that. For Bare Metal hosts Foreman discovery is recommended.

Phase II

PXE / wimboot boots customized boot.wim (winpe)
Winpe downloads the script foreman_url('script'); executes it:
Drive 0 is cleaned, partitioned and mounted using foreman partition table (simple diskpart script)
install.wim is downloaded via http/ftp and applied using dism.exe
unattend.xml (foreman_url('provision')) is download and applied using dism.exe
Drivers are download and added using dism.exe
Required tools are added to the new host (most prominently wget)
Optionally, download extra software (like puppet)
Optionally, domain join script (foreman_url('user_data'))
The finish script (foreman_url('finish')) is download and 'armed'
reboot to new OS

Phase III

Windows native finish tasks are done ('starting devices...')
The finish script gets called by SetupComplete.cmd
Set the time server; sync time
Optionally, the local administrator account is activated
Optionally, join domain
Optionally, execute extra scripts (eg, install puppet)
Securely cleanup (sensitive) scripts using SDelete.exe
Reboot the host; ready for further configuration by Puppet, SCCM ect.

Acknowledgments

wimaging has a merged a fork of wimaging-ng. Many thanks to Daniel Helgenberger for a large contribution portion. SDelete and other PStools by SysInternals are the work of Mark Russinovich.

License

wimaging license

Other licenses:

lubyou / wimaging