We are just starting out with Mirage and I have a few questions that I hope someone can clarify for me. We are currently using Microsoft Deployment Server for image deployment, so I am accustomed to creating an image on a VM, running sysprep, creating the wim file, editing the unattend.xml file and then deploying the image, so this is quite a bit different!
For my Base Layer, is it counter productive to install Windows 7 on my reference VM using Windows Deployment, should I just install Windows 7 from the DVD instead and do all of the set up manually? The base Windows 7 image we have, together with the unattend file provides all of the info for our organization so that seems most efficient, or does it not matter? Also, after the basic windows 7 OS is installed through the image, it is automatically joined to our domain. I did read that "if the target endpoints assigned to the Base Layer are members of a domain, the reference machine used for this Base Layer must also be a member of the same domain", and that is our situation here, however does the reference machine need to be removed from the domain prior to it being captured (similar to when I have to remove the reference machine from the domain before I run sysprep to capture the image to the Windows Imaging Server)?
Also, Windows Imaging allows a setting in the unattend.xml to "copy profile", which does allow the "user settings" for the admin account (previously the "default user") to be set, but I read that Mirage does not retain user settings.
I guess I am mixing the apples and the oranges so am getting a little confused! Thank you for any clarity you can offer.