The User State Migration Tool (USMT) is an extremely powerful and essential piece of an Operating System Deployment.  With the release of the Windows AIK for Windows 7, USMT 4.0 was made available and includes many great new features such as hard-link migration (for more information on what’s new in USMT 4.0 see this article).  MDT 2010 integrates USMT directly into the task sequence for both Lite Touch Installations and Zero Touch Installations.  There have been several questions since MDT 2010 was released on how USMT works with MDT and how all of the pieces fit together. 

 

Lite Touch Installation

USMT 4.0

In order to user MDT 2010, you must install the Windows AIK for Windows 7.  The Windows AIK now includes USMT 4.0 as a feature of the AIK so there is no longer a separate download required for USMT.  When you create your Deployment Share inside of the Deployment Workbench, MDT will create a folder at the root of the deployment share called USMT and copy the USMT files into that folder. 

 

Refresh Scenario

A refresh scenario means that you are deploying an Operating System to a computer that already has an existing Operating System using a task sequence created with the Standard Client Task Sequence.  The process is started from within the current Operating System.  In a Refresh scenario, the disk is not formatted or partitioned so in most cases, the user data can be saved locally on disk saving time and network bandwidth.  During a Lite Touch Installation there are only two steps in the task sequence step that uses USMT.  The first step is called Capture User State and the second step is called Restore User State.  This step will run a script called ztiuserstate.wsf.  The actions that ztiuserstate will be performed are determined by the following factors:

• The Operating System being deployed
• The values provided in CustomSettings.ini for UserDataLocation and UDDIR and UDShare
• The values provided in the Client Deployment Wizard used to start the Task Sequence

If ZTIUserState determines that you are deploying Windows XP it will not be able to use USMT 4.0 and will try to use USMT 3 for the user state migration (more on that later).  If you have specified that UserDataLocation = Network and you have also specified a UDDIR and UDShare in the customsettings.ini then USMT will migrate all of the files to a compressed file at the network location you specify.  Also if you provide a network location in the Client Deployment Wizard, USMT will migrate the user data to a compressed file at the network location you specify.  If UserDataLocation = AUTO and you are not deploying Windows XP, the ztiuserstate script will keep the data local in the MININT folder using hard-link migration.  There is no need to do an estimate because the hard-link migration process only requires 250 MB of space on the disk and if you didn’t have that much the process would fail in the validate step.

Replace Scenario

A Replace scenario is made up of two task sequences.  The first task sequence is based upon the Standard Client Replace template and the second task sequence is based on the Standard Client task sequence template.  The first task sequence is initiated from within the existing Operating System like in a Refresh scenario.  The USMT capture process in a Replace scenario works just like a Refresh scenario with one exception, in a Replace scenario the user data can not be stored locally so you must provide a network location to store the User Data.

The second task sequence is started by booting into the Lite Touch boot image and doing a New Computer deployment.  The Client Deployment Wizard will ask if you want to restore user state and where the user state is stored.  The Restore User State step in the task sequence would then use USMT to restore the user state to the computer being deployed.

 

USMT 3.01

So if USMT 4 has all these new cool features, why would you ever still want to use USMT 3?  Well USMT 4.0 cannot restore user data onto Windows XP.  Loadstate.exe from USMT 4.0 will not run on Windows XP.  So if you plan on migrating user data to Windows XP you will still need to use USMT 3.01.  To use USMT 3.01 you will need to download it from Microsoft.  The Deployment Workbench has direct links to both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of USMT 3.01 in the Components section.  After downloading the installation files you will need to place those installations files in the Tools\X86 folder in your Deployment Share for 32 bit installs and Tools\X64 for 64 bit installs.

Refresh Scenario

In a Refresh scenario,the Lite Touch Installation process will be able to determine if the Operating System being deployed is Windows XP.  The same factors mentioned above are applicable for USMT 3.01.  If the Operating System is Windows XP, the ztiuserstate script will install USMT 3.01 on the computer and then do an estimate to determine how much user data is on the computer.  If the amount of user data is less than the amount of disk space needed then ztiuserstate will store the user data on the local disk in the MININT folder.  If there is not enough space then the user data will be stored in the UDSHARE and UDDIR locations.

Replace Scenario

A Replace scenario is a little trickier.  The Lite Touch Installation process won’t be able to automatically determine what Operating System you are going to be deploying because the Operating System is going to be deployed with a separate task sequence potentially even on a different computer.  In a Replace scenario ztiuserstate will use USMT 4.0 by default, however there is one problem with that.  User Data backed up with USMT 4 cannot be restored with USMT 3 and USMT 4 cannot be run on Windows XP!  So if you are replacing a Windows XP computer with another Windows XP computer, how can you make sure that USMT 3.01 is used?  To handle that scenario, MDT has a variable called USMT3.  To force the Replace scenario to use USMT 3 you would enter the following into your customsettings.ini:

USMT3 = YES

 

Zero Touch Installation (ConfigMgr/SCCM)

The USMT process with ZTI is slightly different than the process with Lite Touch.  The steps in a ZTI task sequence look like the following for capturing User State:

The MDT integrated task sequence uses the built in actions for Request State Store, Capture User State, Release State Store, and Restore User State.  The Ztiuserstate.wsf script is only used in one step: Determine Local or Remote User State. 

With ZTI, the version of USMT that is used is solely dependent on the USMT package that is associated with the Determine Local or Remote User State, Capture User State, and Restore User State steps in the task sequence.  You will need to create a package that contains the files for either USMT 3.01 or USMT 4.0.  Thankfully when you walk through the wizard to create the MDT task sequence in Configuration Manager, the MDT provided wizard will create the USMT 4.0 package for you automatically.  If you want to create a USMT 3.01 package you will need to download and install USMT 3.01 on a client computer and use the installation folder in the Program Files folder as the source directory for your package.

USMT 4.0

The version of USMT that you are using for your USMT package will determine what actions the Determine Local or Remote User State will perform.  If you are using USMT 4.0 then the Determine Local or Remote User State will set the variable needed to do a hard-link migration and also set a variable called USMTLOCAL =TRUE.  The Request State Store and Release State Store steps in the task sequence have a condition on them so that they will only run if USMTLOCAL is not true.  That means if you are using USMT 4, the user state will always be local and the State Migration Point will never be used.  If you would like to use the State Migration Point instead of using hard-link migration then just disable the Determine Local or Remote UserState step in the task sequence

USMT 3.01

If you are using USMT 3.01 then the Determine Local or Remote User State step will perform a USMT Estimate to determine if there is enough space locally on the disk to store the user data.  If there is enough space locally the variable USMTLOCAL is set to TRUE.  Again the Request and Release State Store steps are conditional on this variable so if there is not enough room locally the State Migration Point will be used

 

Summary

Whew..that is a lot of information.  As you can see, MDT tries to cover all of the scenarios with USMT whether you are using USMT 4.0 or still deploying Windows XP and need USMT 3.01.  Enjoy and happy deploying!

 

-Tim Mintner