As part of an automated process to deploy a fairly large and complicated network of Windows machines from images, we have a script which starts WDS and sets up a multicast session. Other nodes are then powered on, PXE-boot into Windows PE and run a startup script contained in the WinPE boot image which has them connect to the multicast session and begin transferring the relevant installation WIM image for that node.
Occasionally a node stops being listed as part of the multicast session (so we stop being able to view its progress); however the node does in fact continue the transfer, and eventually applies the image successfully.
The TechNet article "Performing Multicast Deployments" suggests that this is due to the deployment policy being set to "Automatic Disconnect" which will "...automatically stop clients that fall under a specified speed. The clients that are disconnected will continue to transfer the image using unicasting (Server Message Block)"
Since our automated process does not set this policy, I assume it must be the default. Is it possible to alter the deployment policy via a script (e.g. using the Windows Deployment Services Transport Management API)? I ask because installing and configuring tthe server from which WDS runs is also part of our automated process, and for security reasons we do not want to give the user performing the installation direct access to management tools like the WDS GUI.
EDIT: The server we're running the multicast session from runs Windows Server 2008 R2; the various images being deployed are a mixture of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.