Deployment options – onboarding
Now that we've put in the work going over the prerequisites to prepare the environment for success as we look to onboard our devices to MDE, we'll look at the onboarding steps in more detail. The following is a screenshot from the security portal (Settings – Endpoints – Onboarding), where we will select the OS we're onboarding:
We'll start with Windows 7 SP1 and 8.1, as well as Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, 2012 R2 and 2016, as the onboarding process is very similar. These are the down-level versions that will require the MMA that we alluded to earlier. Again, the MMA is needed, as we need a sensor to report data back to the MDE backend, and it's not built into the OS until Windows 10 or Server 1803.
Since the MMA is an executable, the preferred deployment method would be to use some sort of endpoint management software where we...