Vmware customization specification xml file

Click Next to continue. Step 5: Computer name here you can either use the virtual machine name or ask the user to provide the name when virtual machine is being deployed. You can also set the Name with appended numbers so that VM will be deployed in the sequence.

Step 7: Set the local administrator password for the guest operating system. Step 8: Set the time zone for the guest operating system. Step Configure the network for the guest operating system.

You can either use the standard DHCP or you can configure manually custom networking settings. Step If you want your guest os to join domain then you can directly configure domain details here. You can see that VM Customization specification is created successfully. If you want to edit or export the VM Customization settings then you can perform it here. Note the vCenter server drop down option. Yes, if you have several vCenter servers in a linked mode you would be able to select the one who will be used.

Follow the wizard and click next to continue to the next page. Here you can put some options concerning the Windows OS registration. Next, we have an option to specify whether we want to use a virtual machine name, or if you want to specify your own name for the target VM.

Next option allows us to specify product key. Yes, an important option which depends on the whether you have a volume licensing or the VM does not require this option. Click the required option and then click next to continue with the wizard. Admin password needed for the VM. This option is optional only.

Let's continue with other options. There is a time zone. Pretty no-brainer here. Depends where you live, you'll apply settings for your time zone. No comment here.

Let's continue further and see what's next. Click the Next button to continue. Here we have an option to specify commands which will run once. You might need to check the Sysprep help for that. See the Microsoft Sysprep documentation for information about RunOnce commands.

What's next? The network settings. We can use DHCP by default pre-checked , but we can also specify some manual settings, where there can, for example, be a prompt for the admin to enter an IP address manually if he needs to when the sysprep is running. But it's there and there might be some use cases I guess. Now finally, we have an option to specify whether we want to join this VM to a Microsoft domain or stay in Workgroup. In case you want the VM to a domain, you'll need to specify the username and password of user who has the Active Directory AD rights for that purpose.

This is usually Domain Admin, but in many organization, it can be an account with fewer privileges. If you export the VM customization specification and have a look at the XML file, you'll see that the password is encrypted. Every server which is part of datacenter belongs to some or the other domains. So you can directly set the workgroup of the guest os here or you can directly join the guest os into the domain by providing credentials who has the permission.

Most of the things will work on the windows servers. If you have already created any customization specification file then you can easily import your customization specification as well. For import you must have at least one customization specification saved as an xml file located on a file system accessible from the vSphere Client.

For using VM Customization specification you must configure the virtual machine and guest to meet VMware Tools and virtual disk requirements. Other requirements apply, depending on the guest operating system type. VMware Tools : The latest version of VMware Tools must be installed on the virtual machine or template to customize the guest operating system during cloning or deployment.

Virtual Disk requirements : The guest operating system being customized must be installed on a disk attached as SCSI node in the virtual machine configuration. Guest OS requirements : Customization of Windows guest operating systems requires the virtual machine to be running on an ESXi host running version 3.

Customization of Linux guest operating systems requires that Perl is installed in the Linux guest operating system. In the next post we will see on how we can create VM customization specification policy step by step.

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