SOLVED VMXnet3 Drivers and Task List Order

[Chris]

To PXE boot a Virtual Machine (VMware) I understand there is a bit of effort to get things working. As I understand it, the BootPE.WIM needs to have the VMXnet3 drivers added to the WIM itself. I also read in addition it was advised to specify the same driver packages to the wim file.

This practice seems redundant to me and I have yet to see get either or both options to work, what might be the culprit?

Additionally, in creating a task sequence it seems certain tasks should be prerequisites to other tasks, yet SCCM allows the tasks to be added in any order. Is there some Hierarchic order for which the SCCM tasks should be ordered? (This might help a novice like myself) If I recall correctly the workbench seemed to have this but I don't see any formal reference in SCCM. Thoughts?

 

[Chris]

With regard to the VMXnet3 Driver:

We were specifically looking to install the OS without capturing an image before hand. (This would be an OSD using the .WIM found on the OS media.) We found a reference to how SCCM R2 does the installation process differently for deploying images vs non-captured images. This led us to putting the a reference to our VMXnet3 Drivers share in our Unattended.xml file. Specifically: Microsoft-Windows_pnpCustomizationNonWinPE key was added (or Populated) with the UNC directory path for the VMWare Tools. (All of them). Our deployment was x86 so this directory only referenced the 32bit version of the VMware Tools.

 

[Prajwal Desai]

W

To PXE boot a Virtual Machine (VMware) I understand there is a bit of effort to get things working. As I understand it, the BootPE.WIM needs to have the VMXnet3 drivers added to the WIM itself. I also read in addition it was advised to specify the same driver packages to the wim file.

This practice seems redundant to me and I have yet to see get either or both options to work, what might be the culprit?

Additionally, in creating a task sequence it seems certain tasks should be prerequisites to other tasks, yet SCCM allows the tasks to be added in any order. Is there some Hierarchic order for which the SCCM tasks should be ordered? (This might help a novice like myself) If I recall correctly the workbench seemed to have this but I don't see any formal reference in SCCM. Thoughts?

With SCCM you could create a blank TS and then add the steps. You need to be careful while adding the steps in TS, you should add the steps in correct order. For example you cannot add install app step before Apply OS step in TS. I couldn't get much info on the tasks that need to be in order, however you could check this link for more info - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh846237.aspx