Example application exported by MDTAppExport November 6, 2009

Posted by keithga in MDT 2010, PowerShell.
add a comment

Wanted to include at least one example of what a MDTAppExport.exe powershell script looks like.

So for your review, I have included a sample for 7-zip.

Link

7-zip.MDT.ps1

About 7-zip

7-zip is a popular file archiver that supports numerous file formats, and is available for free over the internet.

What also makes 7-zip a great example, is that you can download the *.msi package directly over the internet.

The command line MSI installer, msiexec.exe, supports the ability to install packages over http://, so there is no need to download the package first. Note that this could cause problems if you try to install 7-zip on a machine that does not have full internet access.

Typically, in real world MDT Deployment Shares, I would download the packages first, but this makes for a fine example.

Persistent Drives

For MDT 2010, the concept of the “Deployment Share” ( Distribution Share, or Distribution Point) has been abstracted even further than that in MDT 2008. A ‘”Deployment Share” can be a Network Share, a Local folder, and it doesn’t even have to be on the same machine as the MDT 2010 Workbench Console is currently running on.

It’s also possible to keep track of multiple “Deployment Shares” within a running MDT 2010 Workbench console. The “Deployment Shares” that are added to the MDT 2010 Workbench Console are called “Persistent-Drives” because they are persisted across Workbench sessions.

Behind the scenes, you can see the settings by looking at the configuration file:

“%appdata%\Microsoft\Microsoft Deployment Toolkit\user.config”

Which Drive to use

I wanted to develop a script that you could run as-is and have the contents instantly added to your MDT Deployment Share.

However, since a machine can have multiple Deployment Shares, or none at all, the question became:

How do we find the default MDT Deployment Share, if any exists?

The best way I figured was to use the Persistent Drives defined in the MDT 2010 Workbench. The Persistent Drive meta-data could be easily read using the powershell cmdlet: “Get-MDTPersistentDrve”.

If more than one drive was defined in the MDT 2010 Workbench, then we just select the first one. Typically defined as “DS001:”

Header

With all powershell scripts we start off with a list of parameters:

#  MDT 2010 Exported Application
#  By Keith S. Garner (KeithGa.com)
#  7-Zip File Archiver 4.65   
param(
 [string]$Folder = "Applications\Common", 
 [string]$DPDrive = "DS001",
 [string]$DPShare = "\\$env:ComputerName\DS$",
 [switch]$Confirm,
 [switch] $Verbose,
 [switch] $WhatIf )

Here the Administrator is given the ability to override several defaults:

• Folder – This is the folder where the Application will be placed in the workbench, and displayed in the Deployment Wizard.
• DPDrive – This is the name of the Deployment Drive used in Powershell. Unless defined as something non-standard by the Administrator, it should be DS001:
• DPShare – This is the UNC path to the Deployment Share, typically a Networking Share. It’s only needed if there are no persistent drives defined.
• Confirm, Verbose, WhatIf – For more information look here.

Restore

Once started, the script will need to load the MDT 2010 environment into powershell, and restore everything:

if (!(test-path "$($DPDrive)`:\"))
{
 Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.BDD.PSSnapIn […]
 restore-MDTPErsistentDrive […]    
 if ((!(test-path "$($DPDrive)`:\"))
     -band (test-path $DPShare)) {
   New-PSDrive -Name $DPDrive -PSProvider `
       MDTProvider -Root $DPShare […]
 }
 if (!(test-path "$($DPDrive)`:\")) {
   throw "$DPDrive not Mounted/Persisted."
 }
}

First of all, we don’t do anything if the DPDrive is already visible to Powershell. This means that a calling “wrapper” script can perform the restoration of the Persistent drives once, and we won’t need to perform it each time for every application being imported.

Otherwise, we add the Powershell Snapin, and restore any MDT 2010 Persistent Drive(s).

We then test for DPDrive, if there is still nothing there, then we mount a new DPDrive to the Deployment Share given.

We test for DPDrive again, if there is *still* nothing there, then we fail.

Folders

If we are importing the application into an Application Folder that does not exist, we must first create the folder.

foreach($NewPath in "$($DPDrive)`:\$Folder")
{
  if(!(test-path $NewPath))
  {
    new-item -type directory $NewPath –[…]
  }
}

Import Application

Finally, we import the application using the settings gleamed from the application meta-data in MDT 2010.

$7zipx86 = import-MDTApplication
-path '$($DPDrive)`:\$Folder'
-ShortName '7zipx86' […] 
-Name '7-Zip File Archiver 4.65 – x86'
-CommandLine 'msiexec.exe /qb- […] /i http://[…]'
-UninstallKey '{23170F69-40C1-2701-0462-000001000000}'
-enable 'True' -hide 'True'
-SupportedPlatform @(
   'All x86 Pre-Vista',
   'All x86 Vista and Newer'
)

More to come

I hope this will be the first of many Application Examples from MDT 2010.

Keith

Keith Garner is a Deployment Specialist with Xtreme Consulting Group