Deploying Nano Server to a Bare-Metal Machine using a WIM and WinPE
There are several ways to deploy Nano Server to a physical machine:
- Dual-boot a Nano Server vhd or vhdx
- PxE-boot a bare-metal machine and install Nano Server from WDS using a vhd or vhdx
- PxE-boot a bare-metal machine and install Nano Server from WDS using a wim file
- Booting a bare-metal machine into WinPE and deploying Nano Server using a .wim file
In this blog, we’ll talk about the last one. For the first two, check out Getting Started with Nano Server & How to use WDS to PxE Boot a Nano Server VHD
To build the .wim image, please follow the instructions in Getting Started with Nano Server and use New-NanoServerImage. Make sure to use a .wim extension with the -TargetPath parameter.
Boot into WinPE and make sure that the .wim file you just created is accessible from WinPE. (I copied the .wim file to a bootable WinPE image on a USB thumb drive).
Once WinPE boots, use diskpart.exe to prepare the target machine’s hard drive. Enter the following diskpart commands (modify accordingly, if you’re not using UEFI & GPT):
Note that these commands will wipe out all data from the hard drive!!!
Diskpart.exe
Select disk 0
Clean
Convert GPT
Create partition efi size=100
Format quick FS=FAT32 label="System"
Assign letter="s"
Create partition msr size=128
Create partition primary
Format quick FS=NTFS label="NanoServer"
Assign letter="n"
List volume
Exit
Apply the Nano Server image (adjust the path of the .wim file):
Dism.exe /apply-image /imagefile:.\ServerDatacenterNano.wim /index:1 /applydir:n:\
Bcdboot.exe n:\Windows /s s:
Remove the DVD media or USB drive and reboot your system using:
Wpeutil.exe reboot
That’s it. Looking forward to your feedback.
ref@