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How to clone 40 ESX windows 2003 regularly with vmware vcenter3.5

Greetings,

I have a challenge for you:

We have a VM which is a manual convert from a live machine from a domain.

We have 4 ESX. For various reasons, we will need to clone this vm to 40 vm, that is 10 VM per 4 ESX.

There is no real solution off the shelf for this problem. This is my scenario:
When run for the for the first time, we need to create the vm machine account in AD

1.      Create customize a post script per machine. What to include in batch:
a.      Power on Cloned VM
b.      NewSID / Rename VM
c.      Change IP address
d.      Change Virtual LAN
e.      Join domain

2.      Reboot
a.      Tweaking VM
b.      Import a .reg ...

3.      Backup new vm
4.      Next day or a week later or whatever, the 40 VM are tired (clogged with .tmp .bak .ini, fragmented disk, RAM etc.
a.      Destroy 40 current VM
b.      Either revert to last valid Master to clone back the 40 vm (see A.)
c.      Or RollBack the vm backup
d.      Or any other valid
5.      And so on.
6.      WSUS on template
7.      Antivirus on template

What do you think?

Best,
Jimmy

Paul Solovyovsky

Should be fairly simple.

Make a VM, clone to template. Make sure you have sysprep in vCenter if you're doing Windows XP, 2003. If you're doing Vista or Win2008 sysprep are part of the OS.

Deploy template. You can create a script to customize the deployment but all the settings like join the domain should not be an issue.

stephenbyrd

You do know that Vmware View is able to clone Servers too? I don't see why you couldn't look to implement VDI for testing. Vmware will have more "official" support/tools coming out soon for Servers.

Paul Solovyovsky

I would hold off on View until 4.0 comes out of private beta. Hopefully they'll have the PC over IP protocol standardized to compete with Citrix ICA

jpierre76

ASKER

Hey Guys,

I see that I was not too much off he specs. I got the boss to but an off the shelf tool and it did not work, so they want me to do without any more buying. I am a PM, so I am very rusty in scripting.

If you have some bricks, I will take same and "canibalize".

THX,
J

jpierre76

ASKER

I will give 1,500 Points for he omplete scenario/picture. And you might just save my life.

Thanks,
Jimmy

Paul Solovyovsky

Are you using vCenter or standalone ESX3.5 hosts?

jpierre76

ASKER

The 4 ESX are on a vcenter 3.5.

Paul Solovyovsky

Then use the deployment method by creating a template

jpierre76

ASKER

I created a template by using the GUI. Then, I will need to deploy 40 times aas per my scenario above.

Paul Solovyovsky

Follow the instructions on the following link. There's a little bit of scripting envolved but once you get the hang of it it's easy to use

http://invurted.com/vmware-esx3-5-templates/

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

jpierre76

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Paul Solovyovsky

that's correct, if you have NetApp SAN it does have a rapid clone tool that I've seen. We have a NetApp but haven't had the need for this. I can this being usefull in your case and if customer is using VDI

jpierre76

ASKER

Yes, this issue was a workaround that the client suggested. And, the Editor of the sofware was at a lost as well.