As others have mentioned, Windows Deployment Services (WDS) is a very powerful and simple to use deployment tool. However, with that said, Game Junky mentioned MDT, also known as the
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. First off, MDT is entirely free. Next, MDT acts as a common console for all of your images and can be used to deploy Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008R2. Using MDT, you can easily add both applications and drivers,
manage Windows updates, create task sequences, prompt for a computer name, join a domain, add a KMS or MAK product key, create an administrator account, specify time zone, etc. You can also import all user data into the new environment using the
User State Migration Tool (also free). In addition to creating standard client task sequences, you can create sysprep and capture task sequences that will do just that – sysprep and capture an image of your reference machine. To become familiar with the process of using MDT, you might want to check out these videos from the Springboard Series page on TechNet:
Deployment Day Session 1: Introduction to MDT 2012
Deployment Day Session 2: MDT 2012 Advanced
The best part is that you can integrate MDT with WDS via PXE boot or you can also create bootable media directly from MDT. Upon booting into the LiteTouchPE environment, you can select the image you wish to deploy, which task sequence and image you wish to use and then proceed to enter the necessary computer name, domain you wish to join and all relative information.
To summarize: once you have the image captured and imported into MDT, you can add applications to a task sequence that also specifies your additional needs including installing updates and patches since you can integrate it with Windows Update or WSUS to make sure the deployment is fully updated. Alternatively, you can put the updates into MDT as packages to be installed during deployment.
Finally, there is also a great deal of resources for various deployment, virtualization and management scenarios available from the
Springboard Series on TechNet.
Hope this helps and keep us posted on your progress!
Jessica
Windows Outreach Team – IT Pro