johnwryan
asked on
vSphere Cloning Windows 7 Guest Customisation vSphere 5
I am trying to clone a windows 7 VM and configure the guest using a script specified in the guest specification manager. I am trying to set the name of the computer to be the same as the VM (works fine) and add the computer to our internal network domain. I have filled in the domain Administrator username and password [and I have set the username to be Administrator @XXXX.com (fully qualified domain Name) and the domain login to be <user>@domain_FQDN].
Once the cloning processes completes, I turn on the network adapter and start the VM and then windows goes through a setup process (windows shows Setup is Applying System Settings) at the end of which I am logged into the system automatically (presumably this uses the Administrator account details that i supplied in the Guest Specification manager script) . I can see that the computer name has been changed to match the VM, but the domain hasn't been changed, its still on the default workgroup WORKGROUP. I can go in and add the computer manually to the domain but of course this is what I am trying to avoid. Any ideas what I am doing wrong or where I could start looking? I dont see any errors in the C:/windows/TEMP/vmware-imc
For a start, should the first restart post cloning be connected to the network or not?
Once the cloning processes completes, I turn on the network adapter and start the VM and then windows goes through a setup process (windows shows Setup is Applying System Settings) at the end of which I am logged into the system automatically (presumably this uses the Administrator account details that i supplied in the Guest Specification manager script) . I can see that the computer name has been changed to match the VM, but the domain hasn't been changed, its still on the default workgroup WORKGROUP. I can go in and add the computer manually to the domain but of course this is what I am trying to avoid. Any ideas what I am doing wrong or where I could start looking? I dont see any errors in the C:/windows/TEMP/vmware-imc
For a start, should the first restart post cloning be connected to the network or not?
ASKER
Hi, the Account I am using is the domain Administration account. I can go in manually after the cloning process is complete and manually add the VM to the domain. I am supplying the domain administration account in the format Administrator@XXX.com i.e. the fully qualified name. I will remove that auto login.
Is there any place that I can see some sort of log that would tell me what is going wrong?
Is there any place that I can see some sort of log that would tell me what is going wrong?
guest customization log, should provide information.
use <domainname>\username format
use <domainname>\username format
ASKER
ok I did change to <domain>\Administrator. Performed a clone. Started the VM up, was able to login with localhost Administrator and I could see that the Computer name was an automatically generated Computer Name. I rebooted and Windows setup went through a customisation process. When that was complete I could not login with either <Domain>\Administrator or with the local Administrator account, in other words the VM was useless to me as there was no way of logging in. (and of course I cant get to see the customisation file). Should I be connecting to the network at the first reboot after cloning or should I be waiting until the second or does it matter?
You need to wait for the process to complete.
When the Server Boots, it will execute a schedule task script, and run the process to change VM name, and then join domain.
When the Server Boots, it will execute a schedule task script, and run the process to change VM name, and then join domain.
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there is no need to specify Admin username and password to login automatically, unless you have a requirement to do so.