Coming to MMS 2008?

Registration for this year's Microsoft Management Summit is open, with early-bird pricing in effect through March 18th.  This year it is back in Las Vegas, at the Venetian hotel, an outstanding location (at least for those of you who like the "fake-ness" of Vegas).

We have three sessions about the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit:

SY04 Advanced OS Deployment with Configuration Manager - Part 3: Extending OS deployment with the Microsoft Deployment toolkit

Thursday, May 1 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM, Bellini 2105

Microsoft Deployment is the next version of Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007. New features in Microsoft Deployment integrate with and extend the native OS deployment functionality of Configuration Manager 2007 while providing thorough project management guidance.  Examine how the Microsoft Deployment toolkit uses and extends the OS deployment capabilities presented in part 1 and 2, providing new wizards, task sequence templates, additional server deployment automation and other features.

SY05 Advanced OS Deployment with Configuration Manager - Part 4: Provisioning your Windows Deployment with Microsoft Deployment (BDD)

Thursday, May 1 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM, Bellini 2105

Now that you have a good understanding of the OS deployment features and functionality provided by Configuration Manager and Microsoft Deployment, we'll explore ways to create dynamic, data-driven deployment processes.  We will discuss performing rules-based, data-driven deployments; using external data sources; adding your own scripts and customizing those provided with Microsoft Deployment; overriding task sequence properties and other advanced topics.

SN02 What's New in the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2008? Updates for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1

Thursday, May 1 2:30 PM - 3:45 PM, Veronese 2405 

Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 introduce new changes in the underlying service stack and Windows Automated Installation Kit. These changes are addressed in the second release of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (formerly BDD). This session will introduce MDT 2008 changes, focused on Windows Vista SP1 support and Windows Server deployment. MDT 2008 provides broader support for deploying Windows Servers, including automated role installation using Server Manager in Windows Server 2008. This session will be presented first hand by solution developers and provide an overview of the Solution Accelerator, updates versus previous versions, tool demonstrations and the current roadmap and release schedule for future MDT releases.

So this time around we are trying something new:  we have two sessions in the System Center track, following after Michael Kelley's sessions on the OS deployment features in Configuration Manager 2007.  First he'll show all the new OS capabilities in ConfigMgr, then we'll talk about how we can extend and enhance those capabilities.

In the third session, we'll just talk about what's changing in the (still upcoming) new version of Microsoft Deployment.  If you read the title carefully, you'll see that there's a slight name tweak on the way...

There are also sessions from Johan Arwidmark, Jeremy Chapman, and Steve Campbell, plus quite a few hands-on labs.  So if you're looking for an abundance of information around OS deployment (whether Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, or previous versions) I think we'll have you covered :-)