It’s all about the DNS
So I’m experimenting with VMware Player – a departure from the usual Microsoft flavours of Virtualization (only because Windows Virtual PC cannot handle x64 Operating Systems)- and I encountered two issues.
I set up a Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain; installed AD DS, AD CS, DNS, DHCP, RRAS and WDS. With that done, I attempted to create a new Windows 7 VM by using WDS to deploy the OS image. Unfortunately, I ran into a problem, an error message stating: WdsClient: There was a problem initializing wds mode
So, I checked all my server settings. Everything seemed fine so suspecting a DNS issues (it’s always a DNS issue) I ran NSLOOKUP from the DNS snap-in. It didn’t seem promising with the unknown server message. So I created a AAAA record for the server’s IPv6 address.
I re-ran the WDS deployment and it worked! Problem 1 solved!
The second problem that I encountered was joining the installed Windows 7 Enterprise client to the domain. It successfully obtained an IPv4 address but it could not seem to find the domain. So…it’s got to be a DNS issue (it’s always a DNS issue). However, this time it dawned on me that the Scope Option for the DHCP server was not telling my client the IP address of my test DNS server. Click-Click! Problem 2 solved!
But…had I fixed the DNS scope option problem first, I would not have got the first error message. Doh!
Live and learn etc. After all, it’s all about the DNS!
