Windows Server 8 Developer Preview – New Features in WDS

WDS is continued in Windows Server 8, and even though it works the same as in Windows Server 2008 R2 there are some new stuff under the hood.

New Features in WDS – Windows Server 8 Developer Preview

This is a brief summary of the new features I have discovered in WDS.

  • Updated Setup Wizard, easy for standalone setup
  • Added Wizards and Properties for managing prestaged devices
  • Added Model support for drivers
  • Additional Properties in the server configuration, for example TFTP and UdpPortPolicy config.
  • Support for new platforms (architecture), arm and x86/x64 UEFI.
  • New command-line switches for WDSUTIL
  • Three new providers (WDSDCMGR, WDSDCPXE and WDSMDMGR)
  • A few new controls for the TFTP provider

Here follows a few screen dumps and more details on the new features

The standalone option in setup
The new node for prestage devices
The new Get Expected Deployment Results wizard
Boot properties on the prestaged device
Join rights properties on the prestaged device
WDS Server Properties, the updated Boot tab showing the new platform support
WDS Server Properties, the updated Client tab showing the new platform support
WDS Server Properties, the updated Network tab showing the new UdpPortPolicy configuration (In R2 it was only available via the registry)
WDS Server Properties, the new TFTP tab, where you can set the TFTP maximum block size and the variable window size

WDSUTIL

So far I noticed five new switches to WDSUTIL

/Get-Metadata
        Displays custom metadata associated with deployment payload or
        devices.

/Set-Metadata
        Changes custom metadata associated with deployment payload or
        devices.

/Add-DriverGroupFilter
        Adds one or more filters on a driver group.

/Remove-DriverGroupFilter
        Removes one or more filters from a driver group.

/Set-DriverGroupFilter
        Modifies one or more existing filters of a driver group.

Output from the /Get-Metadata switch

We now can do Model in the drivers filter, but only two operators so far…

/ Johan

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Johan Arwidmark

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