Dell Article Sample

Evolution of Windows mass deployment
WDS is the latest in a line of Microsoft mass deployment tools that has previously included Remote Installation Services (RIS), introduced in Windows 2000 and refined for Windows Server 2003, and Automated Deployment Services (ADS), introduced later for Windows Server 2003. While WDS does not incorporate every feature of both RIS and ADS, it replaces them as the simple, supported deployment tool at no additional cost, and can be very effective in this role for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 deployments. (For more information on the differences between RIS, ADS, and WDS for previous Windows operating systems, see the “Comparing RIS and ADS with WDS for legacy OS deployments” sidebar in this article.) Figure 1 shows the WDS graphical user interface (GUI).

WDS in Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008
The Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 versions of WDS are very similar in function and features. In fact, the Windows Server 2008 version is a superset of the Windows Server 2003 version, offering additional features such as multicast support and enhanced Trivial FTP (TFTP) performance, which can help reduce the impact on networks configured to support multicast.