How to start with the OS Deployment? 

How to add a new OS Deployment (OSD) manager and initialize it?

The detailed prerequisites to install an OSD Manager can be found in the official documentation. There are a few important ones that must be met in order to start using BCM.

• An OSD manager should be a managed Windows Server device with good storage capacity.

• Windows ADK

Some more information on the prerequisites in the official documentation here.

There are two ways of installing Windows ADK:

A- through the console: ADK 1703 is installed to the console, which is fine but includes drivers that are not up to date for recent hardware.

B- manually: to use a more recent version than 1703, up to 1903 included, it is necessary to install ADK manually.

1. Select an OSD manager:
- select the device that is going to be the OSD manager and click OK. This step will enable the OSDeployment module on the selected device.



- Right-click on 'Configuration' of the OSD Manager and click Properties.



- click the 'Test' button to check if it finds the installation of ADK on the drive. If it shows Installed, then click on the "Check Environment" button, and finally click OK.


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If it is not installed it will not be possible to finish the OSD manager configuration.


2. ADK installation

A. From the console
This will download and install ADK 1703 automatically:
- go to the node "OS Deployment" in the console then select the OSD Manager
- go to "Configuration" and right-click to open the Properties
- click on "Test":



- click on "Install Windows ADK", then click on "Yes":



The installation files are now downloaded, and the installation will start silently when it's done:



- wait for a while until the status changes or click regularly (not more than every 5 minutes) onto "Check Environment" to see if it's installed.
- when it shows "Ok", click on "Yes" to close the window.


B. Manually:

As mentioned in the introduction, installing it manually allows to use a more recent version of ADK, which offers more drivers and as a consequence makes the life of the BCM admin much easier as less Deployment Drivers will have to be added to projects. Please refer to the KA Client Management - OS Deployment - Setting up and Initializing the OSD Manager for more information on how to install it manually.


3. Initialization:
Once the ADK installation is complete, either by the automatic or manual ways, click on "Check Environment, then on "Ok". The Winpe files start to build:



Check the 'Initialization Status' progress to monitor the progress.


Do not start creating projects etc until the status has moved to "Initialization Complete", as shown above.