So one of my pet peeve statements is “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” In my current position, I was shown how to use our template images in VMware to produce new machines and what options to click in. I always felt something was missing in the process. Recently, I was reading an article on VMware and sysprep as I was considering redoing the image and taking out a lot of manual work. Then I learned about customization templates which I never knew existed because I did it the way it was always done! Here are a few things I learned about using the customization templates, and I’ll keep adding as I find more.

What is it?

The customization template is basically applying sysprep to a Windows box after it is cloned or deployed. You don’t have to do the process yourself before the last shutdown. VMware Tools will do it for you. It will join the domain, apply a license, run scripts, setup a NIC, etc. Don’t do this yourself. Let VMware do it for you.

Post Install Scripts

I could not find any documentation detailing this. From what I can tell, this creates a “RunOnce” key after the sysprep is complete. When you set your auto-login reboot count to at least one, on the first login, VMware Tools will run a script. This will be running as the local Administrator user in the user-context after the WinLogon startup process, but before the desktop loads. I added a batch file that asks a few questions during the login and then reboots the machine one last time. I also setup a RunOnce key to delete the folder after it was done. Here is the interesting thing though. I’ve seen other RunOnce keys run before the reboot. So it may be deleting it sooner. Keep that in mind… adding new RunOnce keys manually during this process may result on them running right after, not on the next reboot.

VLAN

You can specify network settings in the template and have it ask you for the IP when you apply the customization later. If you do this and use different VLANs, make sure you change the VLAN to the matching subnet range that you specified in the template. If you don’t and it can’t get to the network during the cutomization, it will not apply correctly, such as joining the domain. You’ll find yourself doing everything manually or starting over again.