PENDING SCCM 2012 R2 OSD x86 / x64 / UEFI

[Gregg Cooper]

Hi, Sorry jumping straight in with a question on my first post.

I recently deployed SCCM 2012 R2 to a site as part of a network upgrade.

The site is a single subnet, all servers are 2012 R2.

The site has varying hardware, from x86 atom eee pcs, to new Win 8.1 x64 laptops with UEFI.

The IT Tech on site wishes to be able to build all of these via SCCM and that is how I set it up during the summer. 3 task sequences. A lite x86 win 7, a thick x86 win 7 and a thick win8.1 x64, as per the technicians request.

I built all of the hardware which was available to me at the time successfully, but did encounter trouble with the boot images. To build varying x86 and x64 (with UEFI) machines I had to keep switching the available boot image around.

This caused issues where the devices were picking up the wrong boot architecture and thus failing to install windows, or just completely failing to boot.

Now that the technician is attemping to rebuild the eee pcs. They keep picking up the x64 boot image and failing due to not being x64 bit hardware.

She is also having trouble with the constant boot image switching, as it appears to be very temperamental.

I am unable to sign the project off whilst these issues are occuring.

Ideally I want her to scrap all of the old equipment and use just x64 images, but this is not possible right at this time.

Therefore, what I require, is to be able to build x86 hardware, x64 hardware with a x86 image and x64 UEFI hardware with a x64 image. With zero changes in SCCM required by the on site tech.

I have looked into this extensively and read about using collections based on architecture, IP helpers, DHCP scope options and everything else. Unfortunately, none of them are quite like the situation I am in. (Apply to multi subnets, or x64 BIOS and x64 UEFI only)

All I need, is for both x86 and x64 boot images to be available, and for the unknown clients to identify and use the correct architecture boot image.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Vini]

You should be able to deploy a x64 OS (via TS) using an x86 Boot Image... not familiar with UEFI though, so unsure if that breaks things...

 

[Gregg Cooper]

Thanks for the reply. Yes I can confirm x86 will build a x64 non uefi. Unfortunately from what I have read and tests seem to confirm, with uefi hardware, the boot image architecture must match the hardware architecture. This means the x64 hardware fails to boot with x86 as its all uefi and obviously the x86 hardware can't use the x64 boot image. This is the predicament. I need both available and the correct one to be auto chosen. This is where I feel sccm fails. With wds or MDT both boot images are listed and selectable. Makes it dead easy. Why sccm can't do the same is beyond me.