Video: How to start planning your Windows 7 deployment using free tools

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The first step in any Windows 7 deployment is to start by understanding what your current environment looks like and what you’ll need to do to get your machines to meet the minimum system requirements or even better the recommended requirements.  The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP Toolkit) is a toolkit that lets you do that and the newly released MAP Toolkit 5.5 can be downloaded here along with full documentation.  In this post though I’m going to talk you through the steps you need to take and I’ve created a video that takes you through it too.

Planning your Windows 7 deployment with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

The MAP Toolkit is an agent less discovery tool which means that it’s easy to deploy and use since you only really need to install it onto one machine on your network and it can do the rest.  There are some pre-reqs for using the tool though.  You’ll need Microsoft Office 2007 or (obviously 2010 is best) and you’ll need SQL Server Express Edition installed on the PC on which you’ll run MAP.  You might be wondering what Office is used for:  The MAP toolkit creates pre-baked reports for you that you can use to help justify any required upgrades.

Once you have Office on the PC you need to install the MAP toolkit and as part of that installation SQL Server Express will be downloaded or you can provide a previously downloaded install.  You then setup a database to store the information that the tool collects.  That’s really all there is to setup, it’s quite simple and it’s covered from 00:00 to 2:56 in the video.

Next you’ll scan your network in order to gain an understanding of it.  To do this click Inventory and Assessment Wizard and then determine how you want to scan from various options including looking in AD and scanning using an SCCM database, a file containing a list of computer names or a range of IP addresses.  In the video I choose AD and an IP Address range as I know that I have some PCs that I’ll want to consider upgrading that aren’t members of my Active Directory Domain.  If you selected AD as a scanning option you’ll need to provide creds that give the tool access to AD DS to find computer accounts, for an IP range you’ll select the start point (for example 10.1.1.1) and end point (10.1.1.255).  IP Ranges don’t have to be contiguous or any such.  You then provide creds for the machines and an order in which to try multiple creds, so you can provide a Domain Admin account (eek) and a Local Administrator account.  Finally the scan runs and WMI is used to query each machine and populate your database. (2:56 to 6:28)

The next step is to dig through the data.  For the purposes of understanding Windows 7 compatibility use Windows 7 Readiness and for Office 2010 compatibility use Office 2010 Readiness, Internet Explorer also has a readiness check too.  These panels only provide you, the IT Pro doing the work, a view of what’s out there.  To produce something you can show the person with the purse you need to produce some reports by selecting Generate report from the task pane on the right. (6:28 to 9:21)

Once that’s done you’ll get reports that list more detail and tell you what you need to do to upgrade specific PCs.  In my video I have an XP PC with just 64mb of RAM so that will need an upgrade to the Windows 7 Professional minimum of 512MB. (9:21 to end)

The MAP Toolkit is a great tool to have in your box and as it’s free using it is a no-brainer really.  You can download MAP 5.5 here and for more info on Windows 7 deployment check out springboard.