I use ESXi5 and Vcenter5. I have a few questions about templates. Do I need to use sysprep? On the vSphere 5 Documentation Center page I can either convert or clone a VM to a template no mention of sysprep. On a blog at Trainsignal, http://www.trainsignal.com/blog/vmware-template-creation and other sites they talk about using sysprep. Is there a best practice?
I use windows terminal servers Is it best practice to create templates with just the OS and then after deploying a VM from template add the applications
Thanks
The reason for using the sysprep is to customize the guest OS, If you are deplying a Windows VM with a template and if you are not customizing the VM then the SID will be the same and you face issues.
If you are running Windows Vista and above or Windows 2008 and above then there is no need to create a sysprep file as they are include in the guest OS.
In the VMware documents you will Create a Customization Specification for Windows which would tell how to create sysprep
Check this KB Sysprep file locations and versions
sysprep is included for newer versions of Microsoft OS (vista and up if I remember correctly).
I have the same question. Is it necessary to use sysprep with the current versions of ESXi and vCenter given that it looks as though the sysprep options are built into a wizard when deploying a VM from a template?
If you are asking whether it is necessary to manually execute sysprep from within the Guest OS when using the Customization Specification and a Template; it is not required. When you deploy from template using a customization spec, the VM will boot up, "customization" will begin, sysprep will be called automatically in the background, and the VM will reboot. Five to 10 minutes later, you will have a sysprepped VM.
If you are deploying 2003 or XP, you have to copy the sysprep files for those OSes to the vCenter Server for this to work. For newer OSes, it calls the built-in sysprep in the Guest OS.
Thank you. I almost want to ask the same questions . But what is gold template? Is it named by Vmware for a good template ?
Review this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg-MnpjQTzw&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Aside from the vCenter best practice of allowing vCenter to customize the deployment of the VM from template (which means that it will handle the sysprep of the VM's OS), you should continue to follow the conventional "best practices" for the use case of your VM. And that is going to vary widely... some applications take well to being installed on a computer that is saved as an image and eventually renamed, and some will not. For a terminal services deployment, I would probably not activate the terminal services role as part of the image, personally, though installing the applications ahead of time might be OK.
Gold is just a term to refer to template where all apps and configurations are required for your environment are installed for your machine -
From below community blog.