What guestinfo values are you trying to populate? Since these are guest info variables, its probably required for the system to be powered on to update.
A simple work around is to not rely on it, use the "annotations" field or if you're using vCenter and these are defined fields, then create a custom field and update these upon provisioning. This is something I do in my environment to keep custom fields to run reports/etc. Using the annotations will just be 1 big text box, but even then you can still use it to store fields and just parse using some delimiter and it's associated with the VM as it's written to the .vmx file.
Here's a vSphere SDK for Perl script that uses "annotations" to add custom values -
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William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware scripts and resources at:
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
I'm not exactly sure which networking info you're trying to work with, but the VM does not need to have connectivity to update itself and pass back the guest attributes. The key is "VMware Tools" running, that is how much of the guest information is populated back to the ESX/ESXi/vCenter host, even the guest customization utilizes the VMware Tools feature to be able to have it execute scripts which is really leveraging piece of the VIX API to do some of the guest operation.
I'm still a little confused on exactly what "guest info" you're trying to set? Like I said before, it's probably better that you implement this as custom fields within vCenter or in the annotations field.
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware scripts and resources at:
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
Okay, lets step back because your initial question is starting to differ from what you're stating now.
1) What "information" are you trying to get? Please list them all out, then we can go forward in discussing a solution
2) What state of the VM would you like to retrieve this information?
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware scripts and resources at:
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
So why are you setting this values? What is the purpose? Are you trying to just extract this information? If you're cloning, I'm guessing you're customizing the guest as well? If so, then this information should already be known, if you want to have it available as just info without having the VM be online, then again, I suggest you add it into the annotations field.
I really don't understand why you're setting these values, what purpose is it being used for. If you can clarify this, then I can give you some potential solutions but right now its still vague that you're trying to force some data into variables that may not be all that useful? especially if the VM is offline, there's only so much you can do in terms of pulling information from the guestOS
Does this make sense?
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William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware scripts and resources at:
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
Okay I get what you're trying to do.
High level, you want to deploy clone of "this" VM and have it configure itself with certain configurations which includes networking and some other parameters.
So my question is, why are you setting guest vars to customized the guest? Since you're cloning a VM, why not use guest customization? Do you not have vCenter? If your answer is the latter, you can actually do all this customization + customize your application or anything else for that matter within the guest by using the VIX API, it just requires the VM to have VMware Tools running and you can transfer scripts directly to the guest and the guest VM does not need to have any networking for this to function. VMware Tools is a proxy to transfer files in/out and you can run these scripts which can IP your host and do whatever configuration you need.
Since you're cloning, I'm assuming you have vCenter so you can use the built in customization to customize your OSes upon completion of the clone which allows you to setup all networking. From here, the system is online and reachable via network and you can use the VIX API to transfer any custom scripts to configure and startup your application.
There's nothing I can see that would require you to use guest info to setup your application and this method is much more reliable and consistent.
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware scripts and resources at:
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".