Deploying Windows Clients

WEBVTT It is so nice to see you. I'm your host, Lauren Deal. I'll also be your learner advocate as we go along, asking this guy all the questions that you probably have. So without any other further ado, I will be so honored to welcome Wes Bryan to the show. Hi, Lauren. Thanks for having me in the show. Yeah, absolutely. This is going to be a fun one. My name's Wes Bryan. I'm an edutainer here for ACI Learning, and I've been a technical instructor for the better part of 15 years now. So I've taught a variety of industry level certifications from the CompTIA Core Foundation certifications to Microsoft Certified Trainer and Training MCSA tracks in former technical endeavors. Then today, I'm teaching some of the Microsoft content as well. So I'm looking forward to joining you along this journey as we dive into some of the topics that we're going to talk about. I have to say, it is such a pleasure to be working with Wes. He is such a fun instructor and edutainer to learn from, and I'm going to be learning right along with you. So Wes, what is this course that we're going to be talking about? All right. So officially, we're going to be calling it deploy Windows clients. All right. So but if we walk that back a little bit, all we're going to do is we're going to focus on how do we get our operating systems deployed in corporate environments today? Things have changed over the years. I mean, technology is technology. You don't have to be in technology to know the way we were doing things in technology. Just take your cell phones and mobile devices. It's changed rapidly in 10 years. So what we're going to look at is we're going to look at some traditional approaches to deploying Windows clients, but we're also going to focus in on some of the newer technologies that help us to take advantage of things like streamlining, automation, and the Cloud aspect of deployment. So it's going to be a really, really fun course. And while we are going to be learning some of the traditional technologies, we'll also be introducing you to some more modern ways that you can do administration around your endpoints. This is exciting. And if we get down to the nitty gritty, what are some key elements that we definitely will learn throughout this course? Oh, sure. So we're going to learn. I talked about client deployment. And with that, we'll come to the concepts of compliant or excuse me, client deployment, if I could say that. But we'll also look at some of the tools, too, so that you can make strategic decisions about, hey, what deployment tool are you going to use if you have a scenario or what imaging and provisioning software are you going to use should you have to configure a Windows operating system post deployment? We call those post installation tasks, right? So we'll look at tools like the traditional Windows 80K, right? Another acronym. We have a lot of acronyms, the Assessment and Deployment Toolkit, or KIT as it's called. And it's a collection of utilities that allow you to streamline and make your deployment successful. It's a collection of tools. In that, there will be a couple of the tools that we will focus on specifically. One of them is going to be the Windows Configuration Designers. It's called today, formally known as the Image Configuration Designer, ICD. They're the same thing just as Microsoft progresses with their technologies and they start to integrate things with the cloud. Sometimes they rename them, but it's the same thing. We're going to talk about a technology that's built into the 80K that's called that as well. We'll look at on-prem deployment options, things like MDT, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about things like, for instance, the autopilot deployments, right? Ways that you can streamline the deployments and configurations of your Windows 10 devices in a more modern approach versus the traditional, heavily infrastructured on-prem approach. We're going to look at a variety of activation methods too, because believe it or not, today's day in environments, not just a product key that we activate like we would traditionally, there's ways that we can improve that process and make that a better user experience and a better administrative approach too. And then finally, we're going to be looking at some remote management. How can we activate and implement remote management so that after these devices are deployed, the operating systems are deployed, they're configured and provisioned, how do we manage them when we're not in the same physical location? These are all some of the technologies that we're going to see and topics that we're going to talk about in this course. Wow, this is going to be a jam-packed series, and I'll be learning along with you, and we're going to have tons of notes and we'll be taking notes together. But I'm imagining that there are some prerequisites that people might need to be aware of. Who might be the most beneficial for this course? Okay, I'm going to say anybody, right? Now, that's a very generic statement. I'll get a little bit more specific here in a second. I'm going to say anybody. But with the term anybody, there is some assumed knowledge when you come to the table. We're not going to spend a lot of time in teaching you the basics of network communication. You have to have a strong foundation in a Windows operating system and understand server operating systems as well. Do you need to be experts in them? No, not at all. But it's going to help you. So when I say anyone, if you don't have these skills, you're going to have to backfill some of this knowledge because we're not going to be spending time on it. We're going to be spending time, not on the more the basic fundamentals, but focusing in on the Microsoft technologies that allow us to deploy our clients. So I do believe anybody can do this. Keep in mind that if you don't have that knowledge, you will have to add that knowledge to your belt as you come to the table to take this course. However, we have also, it's not just for the entry level person as well. It can be. It can be for an exam candidate that just wants to strengthen the concepts prior to maybe taking a certification that require the skills that we're going to teach you in this course. You could be an administrator. Maybe you're already an administrator. Maybe you're a part of the help desk or support desk, support staff, depending on how your team, empowerment team is sometimes I've called it too, right? You're helping your users. Maybe that's what your company's thinking about deploying this. And maybe you want some insight into what's going on. Maybe you're not a part of that team, but you want to get your foot into that team. Well, this is for you as well too. If you're a part of the IT team or administrator, support staff. These really are who this is geared for. Or maybe you're none of the above and you're just seeking to deploy windows and that's what you care about. Well, guess what? This course is going to be for you as well. So we try to be all inclusive, but there are some specifics that we want you to be aware of because you do have to bring some knowledge to the table. Once you have that knowledge, you're going to enjoy the journey you're about to partake. Ooh, well, our journey is just about to get started. So we're excited to start all of this knowledge and training with you. So let's jump in. No further ado. Here's the first episode.