MDT 2012 Update 1: DaRT 8 support

In MDT 2012 RTW that released back in April, we included support for DaRT 7, making it easy to add the DaRT components to Lite Touch boot images.  See https://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2011/11/28/mdt-2012-new-feature-dart-integration.aspx for more details on that.

With MDT 2012 Update 1 Beta 1, we added support for DaRT 8 Beta, while leaving support for DaRT 7 too.  So if you are using Windows AIK, you would use DaRT 7; when you are using Windows ADK, you would use DaRT 8.  (In general, DaRT releases are OS-specific, so DaRT 8 is for Windows 8 and DaRT 7 is for Windows 7.)

The basic functionality with DaRT 8 is the same as with DaRT 7: we add all the tools to the boot image, and we automatically run the remote agent so that you can make remote connections into Windows PE using the remote viewer (which is integrated into the MDT monitoring solution).  Additional functionality in MDT 2012 Update 1:

  • We can automatically locate the DaRT 8 files when DaRT 8 is installed on Windows 8 and copy the files to the right place.  (DaRT 8 can only be installed on Windows 8.  If you aren’t using Windows 8, then you would still need to get the CAB files manually.  But at least you can get both CAB files at once, as the MSI contains both “toolsx86.cab” and “toolsx64.cab”.  Drop those into the tools folder on the deployment share and you’re set.  See the MDT documentation for more details.)
  • We have additional integration with ConfigMgr.  We can add the DaRT 8 (or DaRT 7) files when creating a boot image (although you might need to copy the CAB files into C:\Program Files\Microsoft Deployment Toolkit\Templates\Distribution\Tools, as mentioned in the previous blog referenced above).  Also, the “Use Toolkit Package” step will automatically start the DaRT remote agent when it finds it in the boot image.

See https://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/springboard/archive/2012/03/28/microsoft-dart-8-beta-q-amp-a.aspx for more information on DaRT 8.