Vmware Virtualcenter Vista

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Creating and Using VMware Guest Customization Specification. I know many of you deploy a lot of  VMs in you VMware Infrastructure. Been there, and still doing that. I also know that most of you are using Power. CLI to automate the deployments to make time for some reading; but there are things that need to be done in the guest OS during the deployment and after.

Things like: sysprep, naming the guest, join it to a domain etc. If you have v. Center you are a lucky man, if not you will need to use the unattended. MDT deployment method (not practical in a virtual environment) or other scripts to get this done. In v. Center you can create a so called Virtual Machine Guest Customization Specification, by using a simple wizard and apply it to your VMs during cloning.

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This way a set of scripts are injected into those VMs that are in a cloning process that makes all the things I mentioned earlier. You can do this with Linux guests and off course Windows, which I will cover in this article.

Now let’s see how it’s done. I will start building the customization for Windows 8.

Home; Sysadmin Virtualization 10 Steps to Kick-Start Your VMware Automation with PowerCLI; 02 June 2010. 10 Steps to Kick-Start Your VMware Automation. VMware é um software/máquina virtual que permite a instalação e utilização de um sistema operacional dentro de outro dando suporte real a software de outros.

Server 2. 01. 2 R2 but applies to Windows Vista/7/2. R2 also, then I’ll continue with the customization for Windows XP and Server 2. For systems older than Windows Vista (XP/2.

I presume you already have at least a template or VM running Windows 8/2. Important! As a tip, create the template so the user will not autologon. I noticed the customization works much better this way. It’s small and kinda hidden, but you will find it. On the first page of the wizard you need to give the customization specification a name and optionally a description.

You also have the choice to provide a custom answer file. For now don’t select this option, just continue the wizard. Provide your registration information and click Next. Now this is a very cool feature. How many times you wanted your VMs to have the same name as the guest OS, or vice- versa? You can set this here by selecting the Use the virtual machine name radio button.

I think 9. 9% of the time you will want to use this option, so you can find a server much easier and not keep a log of your VMs in some Excel spreadsheet. Choose the way you wanna go and continue the wizard. The Product Key box is very obvious, but if you are using a KMS server for activation you don’t have to type a key here (it all depends on your licensing agreement). The key is already installed in the OS (Windows Vista and above). During server base systems installations you will have to provide the maximum number of simultaneous connections for the server to accept (licensing mode). The Include Server License Information (Required for customizing a server based OS) box is just for that, and it will provide the information for you during deployments with the settings you specify here. I usually leave this alone and configure the server afterwords, since there are more stuff involved.

Here, type what password you want to be set for the local Administrator account and if you want it to autologon. Select your time zone and continue. If you need to run some commands on the first log on, put them here and when your done click Next. On the Configure Network page you have the option to set a static IP or use DHCP. The preferable approach is off course DHCP, but there are situations when you need to have static IP addresses for your VMs.

In that case go with the second option Manually select custom settings. This is another helpful page. You can add your VMs to your domain only by completing these boxes with the necessary information.

The account that you put here needs to have proper permissions (create objects) in Active Directory. For systems starting with Windows Vista you need to use the FQDN (vkernel. VMs to the domain and the UPN (username @domain. It is not going to work if you type the username in the form domain\username; tried it for many times, and every time it failed. More information you can read the VMware KB 1.

And finally the generate new SID option. If you want your VMs to be sysprepped (recommended) all you have to do is check this box. Important! For systems older then Windows Vista and Server 2.

A few more stuff need to be done before launching this wizard, stuff that I’ll cover later in the article. On the Ready to complete page just click Finish to create the customization specification. An you should see your newly created customization specification in the Customization Specification Manager page. Now when you deploy a VM you can use the already created customization specification. As you can see, a customization specification can also be created directly from this wizard, by clicking the Create a new specification button. Now, when you power on the VM it will start normally, but after a few seconds the VM will automatically restart and when it boots up it should enter in the customization process. Important! If you are deploying Windows 8 or Server 2.

VM might need to restart  for a second time until it enters the customization process. This is a known bug from VMware that is present in v. Center 5. 5 for Windows 8. Server 2. 01. 2 R2 guest OSs. This is exactly what we wanted for this VM. The sysprep files need to be copied in a VMware folder on the v. Center server. This is because Windows 2.

XP/2. 00. 3 don’t have the sysprep files part of the OS like Windows Vista/7/8 have. You have to provide those files, so go at Microsoft and download the sysprep files that matches your OS (taken from VMware KB 1. Notice. Microsoft started taken out links for some of the bellow products since the support ended for them, and if that’s the case you will have to search for an alternative download source. Windows Version. Sysprep Directory.

Sysprep Version. Windows 2. Server SP4 with Update Rollup 1. The updated Deployment Tools are available in the Support\Tools\Deploy. Windows 2. 00. 0 SP4 CD- ROMdirectory. For this example I used the deploy.

Windows XP 3. 2bit, since this is the OS that I want to deploy. Notice. Update 0.

If you are running v. Center 6. x you will have to manually create the VMware Virtual. Center\Sysprep directories in the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\ folder or you will get the bellow message during virtual machine deployment: Windows customization resources were not found on the server.

Now you can go ahead and create a guest customization specification, but this time you will have to provide a product key or the wizard will stop during deployment. Another important thing is if you want your Windows XP/2. NETBIOS name of the domain here. Is different from Windows Vista/7/8 where you need to provide the FQDN of the domain.

The credentials need to be specified in the form domain\username. More info can be found at VMware KB 1.

All you have to do now is deploy a VM from a template and use the customization specification you created for Windows XP/2. Let the tool do it’s job. As you can see the first thing it does its sysprepping the system then reboots and set the guest as specified in the customization specification wizard. At the end you should have your OS deployed, renamed and joined to the domain. To automate this all you have to do is add the - OSCustomization.

Spec parameter to your automation script. Here is an example: 1. New- VM- Name'WSK- 0. Template'Windows XP'- VMHost'ESX1. Datastore'Storage.