Vista is more than just a pretty face; Redmond has sweated serious bullets making it a business-friendly operating system. A key difference between this Windows and XP Pro is that Microsoft is challenging customers to deploy the OS in a corporate environment using only tools it offers for free or that come with Vista. The company — shockingly — has succeeded (see also the Test Center Analysis "Deploying Microsoft Office 2007").

Key to this success is Vista’s new imaging technology. Unlike previous iterations of Windows, Vista can be deployed as a file-based image. Moreover, you don’t need to create beaucoup images — one for each department, one for each power user, and one for that special executive with just enough knowledge to crash the world. Instead, Vista allows admins to edit image files live, either prior to installation or even during. That’s a serious boon not just to admins dealing with naughty users, but for those burdened with multiple language installations, application service packs, or specific configurations for mission-critical apps.

Meet the deploy players
The basic tools you’ll need are found in the WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit), which can be had as a stand-alone download or as part of the Microsoft Solution Accelerator for BDD (Business Desktop Deployment) 2007 bundle. We’d recommend grabbing WAIK as part of BDD since the latter comes with additional tools you might like, including the Office Migration Planning Manager, support tools for Windows XP x64, and more.

WAIK comprises four main tools. First, there’s ImageX, accessible separately or as part of BDD 2007’s Deployment Workbench GUI interface. This is a hard core command line tool that allows admins to access and modify the OS images, called WIM (Windows Imaging Format) files, right off the command prompt.

Then there’s WDS (Windows Deployment Services), which handles the bulk of your image issues and replaces Windows 2000/XP’s RIS (Remote Installation Services) tool.

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Up next: WinPE (Windows Preinstallation Environment), which is a smaller but still bootable version of Vista that can be run entirely in RAM and is used to begin the image-based installation process.

Last, there’s WSIM (Windows System Image Manager). This puppy lets admins build custom answer files to allow users to manage their own hands-off installation processes.

Image is everything
Creating a Vista image begins with building an answer file — basically a configuration add-on that lets Vista’s master install know which specific features the instance wants installed. To create this file, all we had to do was insert a Vista CD into our workstation, then copy the Install.wim file to the desktop and open it from inside WSIM. Once you’ve got multiple images built, you’ll see a larger list to choose from, but at the start there’s only the one WIM file.

Building your answer file is simply a matter of selecting components and configuration options. You can validate everything from inside the WSIM’s Answer Pane.