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How to Deploy a Windows 2008 Server From a Template with vSphere

July 9, 2009

 

With ESX 3.5 and Virtual Centre 2.5 you needed to copy a bunch of sysprep files to use the excellent template deployment functionality (step by step account here)

Now that vSphere supports all the newer versions I had to update my Windows 2008 templates

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There has been some confusion over how you deploy Windows 2008/Vista from a template in vSphere Virtual Center 4.0 and have it sysprep’d ready for use. The good news is – you don’t need to do anything special; you don’t need to put sysprep in a particular directory on the VC box as in Windows 2008 & Vista as there is no longer a separate sysprep download, it’s built into the default Windows OS installation

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Just use the customization specification manager and it can even set the IP address of your new virtual machine as part of the template deployment.

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Under the hood it injects a sysprep unattended/answer file into the OS as it boots and does all the customisations for you based on the specification you created/imported from vCenter 2.5

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So all you need to do is get your master VM built with the OS, patched,  VMtools installed and you can shut it down, convert to template and then just use the deploy from template wizard going forward.

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Posted in vSphere |

4 comments

  1. [...] When vSphere was released, it was announced that VMware included the necessary .xml file to customize Server 2008 with vCenter 4, thus meaning that VM customization and 2008 Customization Specifications could be used out of the box without any manual modifications (i.e. adding Sysprep files to the designated vCenter directories). For a walk through of the vSphere Server 2008 deploy from template process with screen shots check out: How to Deploy a Windows 2008 Server From a Template with vSphere [...]

         by Windows Server 2008 Deploy From Template Guest Customization Update | VM /ETC August 13, 2009 at 12:10 pm
    Reply

  2. [...] How to deploy Windows 2008 server with a template in vCenter [...]

         by It’s voting time.. « Virtualization, Windows, Infrastructure and all that “stuff” in-between January 4, 2010 at 10:04 pm
    Reply

  3. [...] How to Deploy a Windows 2008 Server From a Template with vSphere [...]

         by How to Deploy a Windows 2008 Server From a Template with vSphere | My-Technet January 27, 2010 at 4:41 pm
    Reply

  4. [...] – as I posted previously you don’t need to worry about this if you are solely deploying Windows 2008/Vista and later VMs, [...]

         by Location of Sysprep Files When you Install vCenter on a Windows 2008 Server « Virtualization, Windows, Infrastructure and all that “stuff” in-between February 22, 2010 at 8:01 am
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