Installing PXE Everywhere Agents

Before you begin the installation, ensure you have reviewed the Design considerations and Requirements articles, and the installation steps below.

The PXE Everywhere client provides a light-weight PXE server that responds to PXE boot requests from the local subnet and serves boot files to requesting PXE clients. It must therefore be installed on at least one client in each subnet where PXE booting is required, and preferably installed on all PCs in your environment, thereby providing maximum availability (redundancy) and scalability (load-balancing) for PXE boot requests.

CDA is the recommended method of installing and upgrading the PXE Everywhere Agent with Microsoft ADK files. The steps below are a summary of how you use CDA to deploy the PXE Everywhere Agent with the Microsoft ADK files. Refer to Client Deployment Assistant for full details on how to use CDA to deploy the 1E Client with PXE Everywhere and optionally other 1E clients including Nomad, Shopping, WSA, WakeUp, and NightWatchman. CDA is provided as a zip file that you can download from the Support Portal. Refer to 1E Support.

If you are not using CDA, then you will need to do the following:

After you have deployed the Agent and ADK files, you will then need to prepare and deploy boot image(s) using Preparing and deploying 1E PXE Everywhere boot images.

Refer to Deploying Microsoft ADK files.

The PXE Everywhere Agent is a client module in 1E Client, and is installed using the 1EClient installer (1EClient.msi).

 

  • The PXE Everywhere Responder and PXE Everywhere Agent cannot co-exist on the same computer and are not supported together. Whilst it is possible to install them together, they will not work and will have issues such as failure to bind to ports.

  • To install a Responder on the same computer as 1E Client then you must disable the client module for PXE Everywhere Agent. For an existing installation of 1E Client, reconfigure the client by setting Module.PXEEverywhere.Enabled=false. When installing or upgrading 1E Client on a computer that has or will have a Responder, then you must add MODULE.PXEEVERYWHERE.ENABLED=false to the installer command line or edit the mst transform.

Preparing a ConfigMgr App for PXE Everywhere Agent using the CDA

The 1E Client Deployment Assistant (CDA) is used to create an Application in Configuration Manager that installs the PXE Everywhere agent with the appropriate settings and also adds the required Microsoft boot files from the Windows Automated Deployment Toolkit (ADK).

  • Download and extract the latest version of the 1E Client Deployment Assistant (CDA) from the Support Portal. Refer to 1E Support.

  • Check the 1E Support Portal to see if there are any Hotfixes for PXE Everywhere. Download the latest Accumulated Hotfix (Patch) and extract its MSP file to include in the CDA folder structure.

Follow the Running the wizard steps for the CDA. When you reach the step for deploying PXE Everywhere Agent, do the following on the PXE Everywhere Settings screen:

  1. Enter the location of the Windows ADK (the wizard needs to extract Microsoft files from the ADK and add them to the application source). If you are running the wizard on the CM site server, the ADK should be installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Assessment and Deployment Kit.

  2. Modify the PXE Everywhere Central web service URL, replacing pxe.contoso.com with the FQDN of your PXE Everywhere Central web server

  3. Check Enable support for DHCP Snooping only if you are also deploying PXE Everywhere Responders

  4. Click Next.

  5. When the wizard completes, click Finish.

Verify Configuration Manager objects

Confirm that the application source files include the following, after which you can distribute to Distribution Points.

  • The 1E Client installer

  • An installer transform MST file

  • Files extracted from the Windows ADK

In the Configuration Manager Admin Console, you should confirm that CDA has created the following:

  • An Application named 1E Client x.x

  • A Collection named 1E Client x.x - Required

  • Required Deployments for the 32-bit and 64-bit Deployment Types to the 1E Client x.x Collection

Refer to Configuration Manager objects.

Deploying the 1E Client enabled PXE Everywhere Agent

You will need to distribute application source to Distribution Points. Once distributed, simply add devices to the 1E Client x.x - Required Collection in order to deploy the Agent to those devices.