IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment, Version 7.1.1.14

Overview of WinPE deployment engines

WinPE deployment engines are a prerequisite for provisioning Windows operating systems.

Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) is a group of files that can be loaded as a ramdisk so that you can perform operations on a target. Without WinPE, you cannot provision Windows operating systems. There are several advantages to using a WinPE deployment engine:

It has a small footprint.
The memory usage is at a minimum, creating an optimization in the ramdisk boot.
It contains more built-in drivers.

WinPE deployment engines are stored under Server > Advanced features > Deployment engines.

WinPE versions

The only compatible versions for the WinPE deployment engine are 3.x and 4.x. WinPE 3.x must be created from a Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7 in English. WinPE 4.x must be created from a Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows 8 in English.

Note: WinPE 3.x and WinPE 4.x deployment engines can coexist on the same OS deployment server and can be bounded both to the same machine models. Selection of WinPE 3.x or WinPE 4.x is automatically made during deployment depending on the Windows version to deploy and to the matching model. WinPE 4.x is used to create and deploy Windows 8 and Windows 2012 profiles.

WinPE 32-bit and WinPE 64-bit deployment engines

WinPE 3.x deployment engines are extracted from Windows AIK, one 32-bit version and one 64-bit version.

WinPE 4.x deployment engines are extracted from Windows ADK, one 32-bit version and one 64-bit version.

In the current version of the product, the 32-bit WinPE deployment engine is used for all the tasks requiring a WinPE deployment engine. In BIOS mode, the 64-bit WinPE 3.x is used only to deploy Windows Vista 64-bit and Windows 2008 64-bit unattended setup system profiles. For these operating systems, both versions of WinPE 3.x deployment engine are used together. In UEFI mode, the 64-bit WinPE is used for all the tasks requiring a WinPE deployment engine.

Deployment engine creation

If your OS deployment server runs on a Windows operating system and if you have Windows AIK installed on the server, then when it starts up, the OS deployment server checks that there is a WinPE deployment engine on the server. If not, it creates it automatically. The process takes several minutes and you cannot log in to the web interface during the process.

If your OS deployment server does not run on a Windows operating system, or if you want additional WinPE deployment engines, you can create them manually.

Working with several WinPE deployment engines

In most cases, you do not need to create additional WinPE deployment engines, because one per architecture is enough most of the time.

When the WinPE deployment engine is transferred to a target, for example, during a deployment, it contains all the drivers that are bound to this deployment engine, even if only those bound for the specific target model are used. If you are binding many drivers to account for a very large range of hardware, the size of your WinPE deployment engine might become too large for some targets that have a small RAM. In this case, you might want to create an additional WinPE deployment engine, match it only to the target with the small RAM, and bind only the drivers needed for this specific target. The size of the new WinPE deployment engine transferred to the target is much smaller.

When you have several WinPE deployment engines for the same computer architecture, you must make sure that you have specified matching model patterns that allow the OS deployment server to dispatch the WinPE deployment engines to the correct targets.

The method uses the Microsoft drvload command to inject drivers. If this command does not work, you must inject the drivers in the standard way.

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