Deployment for computers with no monitors

[Glowbeard 0]

Hi there.

I want to make sure I'm jumping down the right rabbit hole.

I've got 8 machines that we use to render and updating the software/changing settings on each machine is a pain.  They all literally have to be the same except for their name.  What I've started doing is installing WDS on our Windows 2012 R2 Server, and then on a VM machine I've set up Windows the way we need the render nodes set up.  The rest of the steps I still have to do.

So now how, without being able to see what's going on, do we get the machines to boot from the network to install these images once I've set it all up?  Is this the right way of doing what I want to do?

Thanks!  Please hold my hand, I make pretty pictures for a living; not IT.

EDIT:  Forgot to mention that I can remote in.  But that's all.  Unless I move them around and connect a monitor to each of them, but I'd rather not have to pull them all off the shelf.

Edited May 15, 2017 by Glowbeard

[anyweb 441]

id personally use MDT (with WDS) to install those machines easily, and then the machines themselves would be hyperv VM's, there's a bunch of guides right here to start setting that up, such as this one.