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Lesson 2: Creating Distribution Servers
In this lesson you learn how to create distribution servers so that
you can speed up simultaneous Windows 2000 installations.
Creating a Distribution Server
A distribution server stores the distribution folder structure,
which contains the files needed to install Windows 2000 over the
network. If you have a large number of computers to install or will be
doing multiple Windows 2000 installations simultaneously, you should
create more than one set of distribution folders. Having distribution
folders set up on several computers will make the file copy portion of
Windows 2000 Setup faster. Even if you have several different types of
hardware configurations on which to install Windows 2000, you can
create one set of distribution folders and use them with different
answer files to install on all the different hardware types.
NOTE
If you are installing Windows 2000 on a computer
running Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, or an earlier version of
Windows 2000, Winnt32.exe allows you to specify up to eight locations
for the distribution folders.
To create a distribution server
- Log on on to the server as Administrator or connect to the
server on which you want to create a distribution folder
structure.
- Create a folder on the server named W2000S.
NOTE
The name W2000S would be for a distribution
folder structure containing the source files for Windows 2000 Server.
You could use W2000AS for Windows 2000 Advanced Server and W2000P for
Windows 2000 Professional. If you are creating distribution folder
structures on more than one server, you could name them W2000S1,
W2000S2, W2000S3, W2000S4, etc.
- Copy the contents of the \i386 folder from the
Windows 2000 Server CDROM to the folder you created.
- In the W2000S folder you created, create an $OEM$
subfolder.
NOTE
The $OEM$ folder is used to hold applications,
drivers, or utilities that you want Setup to copy to the target
computer.
If Setup finds the$OEM$ folder in the root of the distribution
point, it copies all of the files found in this directory to the
temporary directory created during the text portion of Setup.
NOTE
The OEMFILESPATH key in the answer file allows
you to create the \$OEM$ subfolder outside of the distribution
folder.
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