Here is a quick tip for finding WinPE drivers for Dell Servers. You also find an additional tip in the end of the post that can help you find drivers for Windows Server 2012 R2.
Update 2013-12-16: In addition to the steps last steps, and thanks Mirko Schnellbach (@MadMirko) for tweeting this, you can also find Broadcom drivers support for Windows Server 2012 R2 here: http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/poweredge-r810?driverId=7TH1H&osCode=MWS80&fileId=3325762022&languageCode=EN&categoryId=NI
WinPE Drivers for Dell PowerEdge R820
Here is an example with the Dell PowerEdge R820 server, but no worries, the download contains drivers for most Dell servers.
Navigate to http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/Product/poweredge-r820, expand the Systems Management section, and download the Dell OpenManage Deployment Toolkit (Windows) v4.3 package.
After downloading, simply extract the package, and you find the WinPE drivers in the Dell\x64\Drivers folder.
Optional tip
If you can't find the driver you need in the Dell OpenManage Deployment Toolkit (Windows) v4.3 package, you can check if it's available in the Dell OS Driver Pack, available in the Drivers for OS Deployment section.
After downloading the package, you need to extract it twice, first you extract the main package, and then you extract the Dell\payload\mas021.zip file that has the drivers.
After extracting the Dell\payload\mas021.zip file, you can open the drivers.xml to find the right driver. Here is an example with a Intel Nic driver for Windows Server 2012 R2.
Happy Deployment
/ Johan
All drivers will be imported if you point it to the top folder, but I recommend only import the drivers you actually need.
/ Johan
Thank you very much for this information. We recently purchased some Dell hardware and are going to be doing the deployment of them next week. I had a quick question. In your example using the Dell OS Driver Pack, I am actually needing to add the winpe Intel driver MH49P/Default to my boot image and I'm not sure how to proceed. The MH49P/Default folder actually has 10 subfolders underneath it with the naming convention of E1E_Base_Drivers and so on. I'm wondering do I need to extract all of the drivers out of those subfolders and create one folder on my… Read more »
You're welcome 🙂 x64 boot image makes more sense for servers, vendor server tools for WinPE may also only exist for x64. Also, in the next few years, you are likely to see more and more UEFI deployments on servers as well, and then you need to use x64.
/ Johan
Thanks for turning my e-mail into a blog 🙂
One question – Do you recommend (now with MDT 2013 only deploying 2008 R2+) to use WinPE x64 only? I have been using WinPE x86 as it allowed me to deploy both Windows Server 2003 (for legacy deployments) as well as 2008 R2. Now with 2012 R2 on the cusp of deployment (and x86 drivers not easily accessible), does x64 make sense now?