Improvements for All MDT Technologies

The MDT improvements that affect all MDT technologies, which are discussed in a subsequent section, are as follows:

· Support for upgrading from previous versions of MDT as described in Support for Upgrading from Previous Versions of MDT

· Support for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as described in Support for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012

· Support for the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK) as described in Support for the Windows ADK

· Support for the deployment of the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit (DaRT) as described in Support Deployment of DaRT

· Support for deployment to computers that use the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) specification as described in Support Deployment to Computers that Use the UEFI Standard

· Support for deployment to computers that require the new globally unique identifier (GUID) Partition Table (GPT) format as described in Support Deployment to Computers that Require the New GPT Format

· Support for the deployment of Windows Thin PC as described in Support for Windows Thin PC Deployment

· Support for the deployment of Windows Embedded POSReady 7 as described in Support for Windows Embedded POSReady 7 Deployment

· Perform offline migration of user state using the Windows User State Migration Tool (USMT) as described in Perform USMT Offline User State Migration

· Install or uninstall Windows roles and features using MDT as described in Install or Uninstall Windows Roles or Features

· Initiate Microsoft System Center 2012 - Orchestrator runbooks in MDT as described in Initiate Orchestrator Runbooks in MDT

· Integration with security and compliance templates generated by Microsoft Security Compliance Manager (SCM) version 2.0 as described in Integration with Security Compliance Manager Templates

· Run Windows PowerShell™ scripts within an MDT task sequence, including Windows PowerShell version 3.0, as described in Run Windows PowerShell Scripts in Task Sequences

· Create partitions to support best practice recommendations for deployment of BitLocker® Drive Encryption as described in Create Partitions to Support BitLocker Drive Encryption

· Automatically configure participation in the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) and Windows Error Reporting (WER) as described in Automated Participation in CEIP and WER

· Guidance that describes how to use Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) for all database needs within MDT as described in Improved Guidance for Using SQL Server 2008 R2 with SP1

· The ability to monitor an MDT deployment as described in Monitor the MDT Deployment Process

· Support for Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 as described in Support for Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 Customer Preview

In addition, this release of MDT includes many other small enhancements and bug fixes.