CustomSettings.ini and the Unattend.xml file

Now that we've reviewed the CustomSettings.ini structure, some commonalities between the Unattend.xml file and CustomSettings.ini may be evident. For example, the OSDComputerName value of CustomSettings.ini is what will dynamically supersede our task sequence's <ComputerName> value of Unattend.xml when the task sequence runs.

This is the key value in using MDT for deployment. With a structured Unattend.xml file and deployment, you get a hands-off deployment. However, it's machine-specific, typically, hardware-specific. It's also a challenge to manage this and change Unattend.xml, even with WSIM. So, this solution of utilizing Unattend.xml manually (even per model, for example, for driver considerations) doesn't scale and should not be used in the Enterprise environment, or small and medium businesses.

Dynamic modification

With MDT, we are essentially scaling Unattend.xml and dynamically modifying the values as we see fit, for each task sequence...