Windows Deployment Services, or WDS, is Microsoft’s Windows deployment service (see what I did there?) for Windows image installation across devices. Sysadmins use WDS to deploy a prebuilt Windows image across client computers. WDS uses server-based technology, so these deployments happen over a network instead of a USB drive or a CD.
Microsoft built WDS to be the successor to Remote Installation Services, which — as you may have guessed — was the remote installation service used to image computers with a Windows OS. Microsoft chose to partially deprecate Windows Deployment Services starting with Windows 11, but you can still use the tool with older versions of Microsoft Windows, including these:
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Windows 8
Windows 8.1
Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2019
Windows 10
What Windows Deployment Services does
Windows Deployment Services is one of those rudimentary tools that “gets the job done” — it deploys a computer image and nothing else. And while Microsoft is known for creating and releasing the simplest tools on the market (cries in Microsoft Entra ID), WDS really is a fairly simple tool. It is not, however, a robust tool.
WDS requires you to already have a prebuilt image to deploy. That means you need to have your golden image ready to go before introducing WDS to the mix. Many Microsoft shops use the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, or MDT, to build images (we’ll come back to this in a bit). Once you have that image, you can deploy it to multiple computers at once via multicast transmission.
The good news? WDS is free, easy to use (you know, for a Microsoft product 😅), and versatile — to an extent. You can deploy any Windows Imaging Format (.wim) file from any solution via WDS.
Windows Deployment Services vs. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
By now, you know that Microsoft tends to lean into ... interesting ... naming conventions. (Seriously though, what was wrong with “Microsoft Azure Active Directory”?!) It’s no wonder that many people confuse Windows Deployment Services and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). They both deploy images, right? As their very names suggest? Well, not really.
As you know, Windows Deployment Services does exactly one thing: It deploys prebuilt Windows images to devices. The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, on the other hand, helps you customize your image with drivers, operating systems, and software. You use WDS to fire up your computers and get them ready for deployment. Then, you use MDT to customize the image that gets pushed to those computers. Many sysadmins use WDS and MDT together to image machines in their environments.
Many people confuse MDT with WDS — and frankly, I totally get that confusion. It’d make so much more sense to just have one tool to customize your image and then deploy it. Instead, you have to use two separate tools to build images and then deploy them.
Computer imaging with SmartDeploy
Real talk: I’m l̶a̶z̶y̶ efficient, and if you’re like me, you’d prefer one tool that does it all. And that’s exactly why SmartDeploy exists. It allows you to build your golden image and deploy it wherever you need. And even better, we support the most recent Windows operating system — because keeping your devices updated should be rewarded, not penalized. 💅
With SmartDeploy, all you have to do is build your golden image and click a few buttons to deploy it across your devices. To make life even simpler, we built a robust repository with more than 1,500 device drivers to make building your golden image feel like a cafeteria-style experience. Our hardware-independent solution makes it possible to build golden images that play nicely with your devices. And even better, we offer virtual reference machines — because no sysadmin we know has the budget or the patience to deal with dozens of machines that exist solely to store unique images.
Together, WDS and MDT get the job done. But they’re not exactly known for being the most efficient way to image. SmartDeploy is an end-to-end solution that gets the entire job done — because it’s been way too long since you’ve had a proper lunch break, my sysadmin friend.
Simplify and unify your Windows imaging and deployment processes
Try SmartDeploy for 15 days and experience Windows imaging the way it should be.
How to pair WDS with SmartDeploy
We’ve got in-depth documentation on how to integrate SmartDeploy with WDS. The TL;DR here is that you can use SmartDeploy to build and customize your images and then use WDS to leverage PXE boot and deploy them. This approach saves you a few steps, such as building images for each type of hardware in your environment, while still getting the job done more efficiently than using WDS with MDT.
See how SmartDeploy compares to the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. Spoiler alert: SmartDeploy is way easier to use. See for yourself.
