Deploy Windows 2008 using SCCM 2007 with static IP address

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM 2007) is a Microsoft management tool that allows you to deploy an operating system to a physical or virtual server in your enterprise. If you’re currently using SCCM then you will need to know all about it but if you want more information that you can visit the Microsoft’s Configuration Manager site. The site pretty much covers everything you need to know about SCCM 2007.

Now the problem I discovered with deploying an OS using SCCM 2007, is that there are a few vital steps that must be performed if you do not have DHCP enabled in your environment. What I found was that I was able to configure a static IP address when you boot using a SCCM created boot media. This screen is shown below.

However, once the image is applied and the computer reboots then the network settings are lost and the task sequence does not complete successfully. After searching through the internet for answers, I found quite a few people with this issue. Majority of the techs that came across this issue created custom scripts to prompt users or to capture the network settings during the WINPE phase. Although this was a great idea I wasn’t totally convinced that this was the only answer so I searched some more. What I found was that you can set Task Sequence Variables on a computer object residing in a collection in SCCM 2007. To do this go to the computer object in a collection, right click and select Properties. Then click on the Variables tab and shown below.

Using the following Task Sequence Variables, you will be able to configure the network settings and these will be applied when using the “Apply Network Settings” Task Sequence action in your Task Sequence.

OSDAdapter0MacAddress = MAC Address of the NIC you want to configure
OSDAdapterCount = How many NICS you want to configure (in this case just the 1)
OSDAdapter0EnableDHCP = false (make sure this is false)
OSDAdapter0IPAddressList = IP address
OSDAdapter0Subnetmask = Subnet Mask
OSDAdapter0Gateways = Gateway
OSDAdapter0DNSServerList = DNS Servers (seperate using commas if you have more then 1)

This will only work if you prepopulate the computer object in SCCM. It will not work when deploying to unknown computers. In these cases a custom script will have to be used.