Sysprep enables quick server rollouts

At the beginning of this chapter, we walked through the process for installing the Windows Server 2016 operating system onto your new server. Whether this was a physical piece of hardware or a virtual machine that we were working with, the installation process is essentially the same. Plugging in the CD, booting to it, and letting the installer run its course is an easy enough thing to do, but what if you needed to build out ten new servers instead of just one? This process would start to get tedious in a hurry, and it would seem like you were wasting a lot of time having to do the exact same thing over and over again.

You would be correct, this does waste a lot of time, and there is an easier and faster way to roll out new servers as long as you are building them all from a relatively similar hardware platform. If you are building out your servers as virtual machines, which is so often the case these days, then this process works great and can save...