How do I automate “Viridian” installation on Win2k8 RC0?

Sorry for the abrupt end to the posts last week, everyone.  I was out sick.  But fear not, for I am once again a healthy and strapping young man.  And as such, I hereby return to blogging Virtual Goodness!

So - automating "Viridian" installation.  I’m happy to provide some information on how to do this, with the caveat that you should not be rolling out this build of "Viridian" anywhere near your data center.  If you’re doing a massive, wide-scale deployment of "Viridian" at this stage in the development process, and you’re not a member of the TAP program, you should call a therapist immediately.  If, however, you’re just curious about an alternate installation method, read on.

I’m assuming by automate, we’re talking about doing something simple like creating a batch file specifically to run a series of tasks that will install "Viridian", so that’s the level of information I’m going to provide.  Feel free to adapt this however you’d like - I promise not to copyright this.

I also won’t get into how to install Windows in unattended mode - there’s plenty of information on how to do that online, so I won’t add yet another resource.

The first step to installing "Viridian", obviously, is to get the software onto the system.  To do this, we need to stage and install¹ the two MSU packages that contain the "Viridian" server and management components.

To install the management tools from the command line, run:

start /w wusa %SystemRoot%\WSV\Windows6.0-kb939854-x64.msu /quiet

To stage the "Viridian" server components from the command line, run:

start /w wusa %SystemRoot%\WSV\Windows6.0-kb939853-x64.msu /quiet

Reboot your server before moving on to the next step using your favorite reboot technique.

To install the "Viridian" server components from the command line, run:

ServerManagerCMD.exe -install WSV

This is the command line version of the Role Management Tool that I mentioned in my original post, and will perform the installation for you.

Reboot your server again.

As for configuring the network switches or creating VMs programmatically, I’m going to simply stop here and say that yes, it will be possible in future builds.  We do not have scripts available publicly that do this now, and we are not publishing any documentation on our WMI interfaces until our Beta release.

Hope this helps!

¹ "What’s up with this crazy lingo you’re throwing around here, Mike? What’s the difference between staged and installed?"
I’m glad you asked, Billy.  Think of the last time that you needed to install an optional component on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.  Unless you had the whole installation CD copied to a network share or the local drive (which a lot of OEMs do), you probably needed to insert your installation CD during the process so Windows could get all the files it needed.  

In Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, we changed how that works.  There’s a "package store" on every installation that contains the binaries for all of the optional components and features so that you don’t need to provide the installation DVD at every install/uninstall of an optional component.  These binaries aren’t loaded into memory, and aren’t even in the same location they would be if the component was installed.  They’re just present on the system so that optional components and feature installation is a little bit easier.

When a component is only available in the package store, and is not installed on the system, it’s staged.  When a component is installed on the system, it’s - you guessed it - installed.

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