SCCM R2 and OSD n00b questions

Apologies in advance for the naivety of these questions but I find this whole area pretty confusing! In our current infrastructure we have 1 Primary and 13 Secondary Sites, the secondary sites are located in different countries. What I would "like" to be able to do from an OS deployment perspective is;
 
1). Take a bare metal machine and boot it up (using PXE, USB or both) and have an OS image installed on the machine.
 
2). Have a machine that's already in use and upgrade this machine to a new OS and migrate the users settings into the new OS once built.
 
3). A user is getting a replacement machine and have a process whereby Machine B (new machine) can somehow be built and migrate the settings from Machine A (users existing machine).
 
My questions are below
 
Are all of the above scenarios possible/feasible?  
 
Since I already have SCCM R2 installed do I also need to install MDT, USMT, WDS, etc to achieve any or all of the above?
 
Is there an "OSD for Dummies" guide that could at least walk me through from start to finish with any of the scenarios above?
 
 
I honestly feel that if I can get the process actually started in its most basic sense that I’ll be able to progress more quickly afterwards.
 
Many Thanks in advance
 

All those scenarios are indeed possible, we are using them all in my environment.

1). quite possibly the easiest to set up, you just need to capture your image as a .wim then set up a task sequence to blow it back down. Our most basic one looks like this:
Restart in PE
Partition Disk
Apply Operating System (this is where you specify the image you have already captures, also can use an unattend.xml created with the AIK)
Auto Apply Drivers
Apply Windows Settings (user name, org name, product key, licensing mode, local admin password, time zone)
Apply Network Settings (Joins a domain with a specific user account)
Setup windows and ConfigMgr (installs SCCM client)

2. yes, this is also pretty easy to set up once you figure out USMT and hardlinking.  You'll want to do some drive free space checks before running it though. Again, a basic task sequence looks like this:
Capture Windows Settings (Migrate computer name? user and org name? timezone?)
Set local state location (OSDStateStorePath, ours is %_SMSTSUserStatePath%)
Set hard-link scan paramaters (/ue:%computername%\* /hardlink /nocompress)
Set hard-link load paramaters (/hardlink /nocompress)
captuer user files and settings (need a USMT package, can customize .xml files used)
Next step is pretty much toss in your task sequence from 1). above to do the OS install, then afterwards
Restore User Files and Settings

3). can be set up with the State Migration Point role pretty easily, you just have to have 2 task sequences, a capture task sequence to run against computer A that saves the state to the State Migration Point, then a restore task sequence that you run on Computer B to restore the state.  MAKE SURE YOU SET UP THE COMPUTER ASSOCIATION BETWEEN COMPUTER A AND B BEFORE YOU RUN THE CAPTURE!

If you want to PXE boot you need WDS installed.  If you want some kick ass task sequence options I would install the MDT.  USMT is required but doesn't have to be fiddled with, you just need a package in SCCM that contains all the USMT files.

Yes, they are all possible.

1. Install the PXE Service Point (PSP) at your secondary sites. You can create bootable media from the console. You can burn that to a DVD or copy it to a USB stick for offline builds. Some things are not supported e.g., Auto Apply Drivers -- you'll need to use Driver Packages instead. It depends on your driver management approach.

2. Look at using the State Migration Point (SMP) and User State Migration Tool (USMT).

3. As above and look at using a Computer Association.

You can install and integrate MDT if you want to. It's probably only just going to confuse you more though. You can do OSD without MDT. You can add it later. You need WDS for the PSP.

In terms of getting started...

I guess it's easier to watch some demos than read lots. Try http://edge.technet.com/SystemCenter/.

Niall has some easy to follow step-by-step guides at www.windows-noob.com.

Otherwise, there's plenty of information on TechNet. Look into the different components one at a time.

Enjoy :)

Edit: Ahhh, joemonkey was too fast :)

I have a quick-start guide for MDT integration with ConfigMgr on my blog, i just posted it last week.  It will walk you through installing MDT and integrating with ConfigMgr, as well as creating/working with the boot images and task sequences.

Yes, all of these scenarios are possible.
 
Start with the bare metal scenarios and get that working in your enviroment.
 
Then look at adding USMT to work out the second scenarios. 
 
As for the third, you can either use USMT for that, or the Windows Easy Transfer stuff. 
 
I don't think you need MDT installed if you already have ConfigMgr.  There is an integration into SCCM, but depending what your needs are for your bare metal scenario you might not need it (we dont).  It might however make it easier as they have templates and such.
 
WDS will get installed when you setup your PXE server, but other then that you won't need to worry about it.  Basically when you configure your PXE point you install WDS but you don't configure it.
 

Okay, i have finally managed to get Scenario 1. working (Bare metal machine via PXE, sorta!). OS got installed and booted perfectly but after i joined the machine to the domain about 10 minutes later the Task Sequence started to run again and was going to boot into Windows PE again! Any idea why this might happen?

Do you have multiple mandatory advertisements offering different Task Sequences? That's one possible scenario...

check your task sequence sdvertisements Schedule properties, see here

Well, it was set as a mandatory and "always rerun" but i had just assumed that it wouldn't re-run once it had done so the first time successfully. Oh well, living and learning here.....slowly!

Don't mean to flog a dead horse here but i'm still in trouble with the "bare metal" scenario. I'm trying to capture an OS image from a Lenovo T410. PXE starts, Windows PE boots up just fine, the OS gets downloaded from the local DP and the machine restarts successfully after "installing" the OS image. On the restart, Windows PE starts again and the SCCM client gets installed successfully but its after this point that i hit the problem.

The message on screen says "Installing Deployment Toolkit" and soon afterwards the process fails with an error, 0x00000002. I've checked as many other forums as i could find and the common feeling appears to be a NIC related issue.

I have added every single NIC that i can find in relation to the T410 to the driver package and the boot image and have populated my DP's with these but it fails every time. Below is a snippet from the SMSTS.log file, which again seems to infer that there are network issues of some kind. I am able to ping and nslookup the Primary Site server from Windows PE, regardless of what below indicates.

Any ideas??

SMSTS.log

End TS policy evaluation TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
Policy evaluation initiated TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
g_TSManager.Run(), HRESULT=80004005 (e:\nts_sms_fre\sms\client\tasksequence\tsmanager\tsmanager.cpp,657) TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
Error Task Sequence Manager failed to execute task sequence. Code 0x80004005 TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
Sending error status message TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
Sending StatusMessage TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
Formatted header: TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
<Msg SchemaVersion="1.1" ReplyCompression="zlib"><ID/><SourceID>7cbe0355-7a7f-4dbe-9a9d-95d3ee55222d</SourceID><SourceHost/><TargetAddress>mp:[http]MP_StatusManager</TargetAddress><ReplyTo>direct:OSD</ReplyTo><Priority>3</Priority><Timeout>3600</Timeout><SentTime>2010-09-01T14:52:26Z</SentTime><Protocol>http</Protocol><Body Type="ByteRange" Offset="0" Length="1168"/><Hooks/><Payload Type="inline"/><TargetHost/><TargetEndpoint>StatusReceiver</TargetEndpoint><ReplyMode>Sync</ReplyMode><CorrelationID/></Msg>
 TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
CLibSMSMessageWinHttpTransport::Send: URL: PrimarySiteServer.domainname.com:80  CCM_POST /ccm_system/request TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
Error. Received 0x80072ee7 from WinHttpSendRequest. TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
unknown host (gethostbyname failed) TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
hr, HRESULT=80072ee7 (e:\nts_sms_fre\sms\framework\osdmessaging\libsmsmessaging.cpp,7714) TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
sending with winhttp failed; 80072ee7 TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
Will retry in 5 second(s) TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:26 2016 (0x07E0)
Retrying... TSManager 01/09/2010 16:52:31 2016 (0x07E0)

God da*n it! It was a permissions issue on the share that i created for my drivers on the Primary Site. The drivers were getting imported correctly into SCCM but it was then unable to add these drivers correctly to my driver package because the permissions on the share were incorrect! I since added the below permissions to the share. Hopefully this may be of some assitance to someone else in the future

PRIMARYSITECOMPUTERNAME\Administrators        Full Control

PRIMARYSITECOMPUTERNAME\SYSTEM                   Full Control

PRIMARYSITECOMPUTERNAME\PRIMARYSITECOMPUTERNAME$     Full Control

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