Microsoft retired the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit on January 6, 2026, but bare-metal deployment did not retire with it. Cloud-native bare-metal deployment is what fills the gap: putting a full operating system onto an empty disk — a new machine, a wiped device, a recovery — entirely over the internet, rather than from a local PXE server or imaging share. For over twenty years MDT was how many IT teams did exactly that, from infrastructure they hosted themselves. Now the tool is gone, and the need is not.
Why Autopilot Doesn’t Close the Bare-Metal Gap
When Microsoft retired MDT, it pointed customers to Windows Autopilot for cloud deployment or Configuration Manager for on-premises OSD. Neither fully covers bare metal. Autopilot works from the Windows image a device already ships with from the factory — it applies configuration, policies, and apps, but it does not image an empty disk. Configuration Manager can image bare metal, but only with on-premises servers and boot media to maintain.
That leaves a real set of everyday scenarios uncovered: custom hardware that arrives without your image, a machine wiped after a fault, a device reissued to a new user, or a full rebuild after ransomware. Each one starts from a blank disk, and each one is exactly where Autopilot expects a working OS to already exist.
The timing sharpens it. Windows 10 reached end of support on October 14, 2025, and the resulting Windows 11 refresh is putting more new and repurposed hardware through IT teams than any migration in years — right as the tool many of them used for imaging disappeared.
What Cloud-Native Bare-Metal Deployment Requires
A modern replacement for MDT has to do more than copy an image to a disk. Five things make bare-metal deployment work without on-premises infrastructure:
- Boot and image over the internet. A device with an empty disk should provision from anywhere, without a deployment server on the local network.
- One gold image for the whole fleet. A single image, not a separate build per hardware model, keeps the process maintainable.
- Drivers matched to the hardware automatically. The right vendor drivers get applied at deployment based on the model detected — no manual research.
- First-time provisioning and recovery, both. The same path that stands up a new device also rebuilds a failed or repurposed one.
- No on-premises footprint to maintain. No PXE server, no boot media library, no imaging share to keep patched.
How CapaOne Provisions Bare Metal From the Cloud
CapaOne closes that gap from one EU-hosted endpoint management platform, built cloud-native so there is no on-premises deployment server to stand up or secure. It works as a full MDT replacement on its own, and as the bare-metal layer underneath a modern setup.
One Gold Image, the Right Drivers Automatically
Provision Manager deploys a single gold image to bare-metal devices and orchestrates drivers at deployment time — applying vendor-certified, model-aware driver packs matched to the hardware it detects. One image works across different models, without manual driver research or a separate build per device. That is endpoint provisioning without the on-premises machinery it used to require.
Provision and Recover From Anywhere
Because the whole workflow runs over the internet, IT provisions a new device or rebuilds a wiped one from wherever it is — no USB round, no shipping a machine back to base. The same path handles first-time setup and recovery, so a rebuild follows the process your team already knows.
For organizations running Autopilot, this fits alongside it rather than competing with it. Autopilot needs a working OS; Provision Manager provides one. CapaOne works with your Microsoft setup, or entirely without it — Autopilot takes new factory devices from the box, and Provision Manager covers the bare-metal deployment and recovery it was never designed for.
Bare-Metal Recovery After a Failure or Ransomware
Provisioning and recovery are the same problem seen at two different moments. A device that arrives blank and a device wiped by a fault or a ransomware attack both start from an empty disk — the only difference is whether you planned it. A bare-metal path matters most exactly when things go wrong.
When an endpoint has to be rebuilt, Provision Manager reimages it from the cloud the same way it provisions a new one: one gold image, the right drivers for the hardware, no trip back to a deployment server. For a team recovering many machines after an incident, that turns rebuild from a bottleneck into a repeatable step — the device boots, pulls its image over the internet, and returns to a known-good state.
What Changes for IT
Run CapaOne standalone, and the deployment gap MDT left behind simply closes: one gold image, drivers handled automatically, new builds and recoveries from anywhere, and nothing on-premises to maintain. Instead of running deployment servers, updating boot images, and rebuilding driver libraries, IT maintains a single cloud workflow. The Windows 11 refresh becomes a repeatable process rather than a series of one-off rebuilds.
The shift is from imaging as an on-site chore to provisioning as a cloud service. Your team stops maintaining servers and boot media, and starts rebuilding any device, anywhere, in the time it takes to boot it.
See how CapaOne provisions Windows onto bare metal from anywhere — no PXE server, no imaging share, no on-premises deployment infrastructure. Book a demo to see it live — or start a free trial and provision a device yourself.