Install-WindowsFeature –name Web-server -includemanagementtools This can be done either via the server manager tool, or if you like, the PowerShell approach.

The server will need WDS and IIS to be installed.

The installation and configuration have several steps: Setup the WDS Server Taking a clean Windows server, I like to provide a 60GB C: drive for the OS and a 300GB WDS drive for the various WIM files for deployment of Windows and for the Linux install files. There is no reason that others couldn’t be used. I’ll be focusing on those three operating systems as I go through this article. The WDS setup I currently use builds Windows, CentOS and ESXi. Once done, a menu entry is created to allow the Linux PXE boot menu to hand over to Windows for Windows builds, and IIS is used to provide a web interface for downloading the Linux config files. Essentially, the PXE boot loader used by Windows needs to be swapped out for a Linux one. To configure WDS to be able to deploy Windows and Linux systems requires some command line changes. Out of the box, it’s able to deploy Windows VMs, and with a couple of small tweaks, it’s possible to have WDS build Linux and VMware servers, all from a selectable Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) boot menu. Windows Deployment Services (WDS) is a great addition to the Windows product set.