x86 PE Deployments breaking x64

[joeman1881]

So in my environment there are technicians for each site. These technicians work independently on their sites but manage deployments all from the datacenter/office. We only have one Primary Site Server, and one secondary DP, so all machines are PXE booting to the Primary Servers IP. We noticed that when an x86 machines is mid task sequence, if a x64 task sequence is deployed, the x86 machines all immediately fail. This becomes an issue because we are using some "inexpensive" tablet machines that can only be deployed as x86, then also deploying Surface pro2's, and Surface Pro3's that can only be deployed as x64. The technicians have been voicing their frustrations so I figured I'd reach out and see if anyone else has run into this, and if there is a better solution you've found.

 

Thanks!

-Joe

[anyweb]

x86 boot wim can deploy both x86 images and x64 operating system images except when it's UEFI and in that case the boot image must match the architecture of the device,

 

surface pro 2/3 devices are UEFI and must have a 64bit UEFI boot image, so you can either move all your task sequences to a 64 bit boot wim and keep the x86 boot wim task sequences as exceptions with their own collection, or target only unknown x86 devices with that deployment, or use boot media for those devices.

[joeman1881]

x86 boot wim can deploy both x86 images and x64 operating system images except when it's UEFI and in that case the boot image must match the architecture of the device,

 

surface pro 2/3 devices are UEFI and must have a 64bit UEFI boot image, so you can either move all your task sequences to a 64 bit boot wim and keep the x86 boot wim task sequences as exceptions with their own collection, or target only unknown x86 devices with that deployment, or use boot media for those devices.

 

Thanks for the reply anyweb. The initial thought was just to run everything as x86 because we have some older machines that are x86 cpu, and when watching the taskmgr in PE the ram utilization seemed to be low enough. The SP2/3 is the killer though because like you said it is UEFI only...Is there anyone out there who has figured out a way to run deployments to both x64/x86 without interference issues?

 

Should I have 2 "Unknown Devices" collections for x86 and x64 to maybe correct the problem? I will try testing this, but any additional experience/insight would be great.

 

Thanks!

[Peter van der Woude]

Two separate collections for unknown computers could help when it's really one-on-one with the architecture and boot image.