Use of other languages

[mgonzcast]

I have looked on the website and I can´t find much information of the architecture, how the module is built and how modules and scripts are layed out in the several folders of the project.

I am looking into how to deploy evaluation isos for Spanish language. My idea is to use an unattended.xml file that we have to deploy servers with our configuration in our labs.

Where should I look into and how do you suggest to tackle this task?

[codaamok]

When the module is installed you can find its installed path on disk with:

Get-Module AutomatedLab -ListAvailable | Select Version, Path

As for using answer files, I don't think that's possible but you should be able to grab a Spanish ISO for Windows from Visual Studio / MSDN or VLSC. This makes me question "how language agnostic is AutomatedLab?" probably not very, since the documentation recommends en-us locale.

[mgonzcast]

Thanks for answering!

I can tell you that when you scan your es-es ISOs AL reports those ISOs won´t be used. I tried renaming them, but same thing.

I will look into the code to see if that can be tricked or changed since I am forced to use es-es locale.

[codaamok]

What if maybe instead you used en-us media but installed the needed language packs at the end?

[mgonzcast]

Is that possible? How?

[codaamok]

It's totally possible, it's been done on the desktop OS for years. I've never done it on Server OS but I can't imagine it be any different.

I don't have any specific resources at hand but generically searching for "install language pack windows server xxxx" may help. Typically involves a .cab file and modifying some registry keys to change the system/install language.

That's a better approach than modifying the module and trying to trick it. You'll be forced to carry forward your changes with each new release of AutomatedLab, and more difficult to share your build scripts with colleagues as they'll need your changes too.

Plus the code for AutomatedLab is quite large, it wouldn't be an easy task to try and trick it. I bet there's a lot of property names and values in the code that strictly depend on en-us locale. You would be surprised how things are stored differently in places like WMI when you use a different language.

[mgonzcast]

I see. But as you said depending on the locale, there are things that change location as WMI, which could make that things that work on production with ES-ES ISO might not work with these AL labs localized into Spanish. Or am I wrong?

[raandree]

We have quite some issues in the past based on the usage of non en-US operating systems. Supporting different languages can be really time consuming so we decided to support only en-US. However, there is a configuration item that should allow also using other languages. But, I have just discovered a little bug and the config item is not being used. A fix is on the way.

With the fixed version you can do this:

If you clear the AL cache using 'Clear-LabCache', the next time you call 'Get-LabAvailableOperatingSystem' AL will scan all the ISOs in 'LabSources\ISOs'. You should see something like this:

17:16:41|00:08:36|00:08:36.540| Scanning 2 files for operating systems
The windows image 'Windows Server Standard' in the ISO 'de_windows_server_version_1909_updated_march_2020_x64_dvd
_2f17045a.iso' has the language(s) 'de-DE'. AutomatedLab does only support images with the language 'en-us' hence this image will be skipped.
17:16:43|00:08:38|00:08:38.219| The windows image 'Windows Server Datacenter' in the ISO 'de_windows_server_version_1909_updated_march_2020_x64_dvd_2f17045a.iso' has the language(s) '
de-DE'. AutomatedLab does only support images with the language 'en-us' hence this image will be skipped.

17:16:44|00:08:39|00:08:39.513| Found 2 OS images.
OperatingSystemName       Idx Version        PublishedDate       IsoPath                                                                                
-------------------       --- -------        -------------       -------                                                                                
Windows Server Standard   1   10.0.18362.657 09.02.2020 22:03:49 E:\LabSources\ISOs\en_windows_server_version_1909_updated_feb_2020_x64_dvd_8c906407.iso
Windows Server Datacenter 2   10.0.18362.657 09.02.2020 22:03:02 E:\LabSources\ISOs\en_windows_server_version_1909_updated_feb_2020_x64_dvd_8c906407.iso

You should be able to use your Spanish images when you set 'DoNotSkipNonNonEnglishIso'

Set-PSFConfig -Module AutomatedLab -Name DoNotSkipNonNonEnglishIso -Value $true
Clear-LabCache
Get-LabAvailableOperatingSystem

The output in my case was as expected:

17:49:19|00:29:16|00:29:16.516| Scanning 2 files for operating systems
Found 4 OS images.
OperatingSystemName       Idx Version        PublishedDate       IsoPath                                                                                  
-------------------       --- -------        -------------       -------                                                                                  
Windows Server Standard   1   10.0.18362.720 12.03.2020 08:43:24 E:\LabSources\ISOs\de_windows_server_version_1909_updated_march_2020_x64_dvd_2f17045a.iso
Windows Server Datacenter 2   10.0.18362.720 12.03.2020 08:44:56 E:\LabSources\ISOs\de_windows_server_version_1909_updated_march_2020_x64_dvd_2f17045a.iso
Windows Server Standard   1   10.0.18362.657 09.02.2020 22:03:49 E:\LabSources\ISOs\en_windows_server_version_1909_updated_feb_2020_x64_dvd_8c906407.iso  
Windows Server Datacenter 2   10.0.18362.657 09.02.2020 22:03:02 E:\LabSources\ISOs\en_windows_server_version_1909_updated_feb_2020_x64_dvd_8c906407.iso  

There is one more thing then. If you have the same OS in different languages, there is no way to specify the language. In the case above you could select the German OS as it has a different version number. But if everything is the same, there is no way to distinguish between the two version.

I will update this issue once the 'DoNotSkipNonNonEnglishIso' fix is ready.

[raandree]

A version with the fix can be downloaded from https://ci.appveyor.com/project/raandree/automatedlab/builds/32273028/artifacts if you don't want to wait for the next release.

[mgonzcast]

Thank you @randree !

Does this mean that I can use Spanish ISOs with automatedlab?

One more question. Can I use my own unattended.xml file to deploy the machines?

[raandree]

In theory yes, but we haven't tested this.

Please try the AL installer from the link above and do this:

Set-PSFConfig -Module AutomatedLab -Name DoNotSkipNonNonEnglishIso -Value $true
Clear-LabCache
Get-LabAvailableOperatingSystem

You can use whatever unattend.xml you want. If you call Install-Lab -BaseImages -NetworkSwitches -VMs AL will create the machines but does not start them. You can then mount the diff disk of the VM, replace or change the unattended.xml in the root directory, unmount the disk and continue with the deployment. Please note that AL is adding stuff to the unattend,xml to enable WinRM with CredSsp. This is required in order to use AL as the orchestration engine if you want to use AL to deploy services like AD, PKI, etc.

Why do you want to use your own unattend.xml? Is there something missing in the standard one that should be added?