This morning I attended a session on Windows Client Deployment. There was some mixed news.

The good

A tool called Deployment Imaging Servicing and Management (DISM) is due for release next year as will an updated version of ImageX. This will form part of WAIK 2.0

• DISM will be able to work with WIMs and VHDs.
• DISM will allow simple add/remove/lisitng of drivers and Windows features.
• Dynamic driver provisioning will allow drivers to stay on the WDS server. The image will contain references to the drivers meaning that only the drivers needed are transferred to the machine.
• WDS will deploy VHDs in the same way as WIMs however they will still need to be syspreped.

The Bad and the Ugly

• DISM is another command line tool.
• There will be no update to WSIM. It will look and feel exactly the same.
• No GUI for ImageX.
• No updates to WDS manager for dealing with legacy RIS images.