I recently needed to create a Windows 2008 R2 template on a remote vCenter Server. Rather than start from scratch and create a new "golden image," I converted an existing Windows 2008 R2 template to a virtual machine and used VMware Converter to move it to the remote site. Both sites are using vCenter Server 5.0.0 build 623373 and ESXi 5.0.0 build 702118. After Converter had completed, I converted the VM to a template on the remote side and imported the exported Windows 2008 R2 guest customization specification. I then tried to deploy a virtual machine from this template. I chose the newly imported guest customization specification and was presented with the following error, after completing the deploy template wizard.
Customization of the guest operating system 'windows7Server64Guest' is not supported in this configuration. Microsoft Vista (TM) and Linux guest with Logical Volume Manager are supported only for recent ESX host and VMware Tools versions. Refer to vCenter documentation for supported configurations.
Since both vCenter Servers and all ESXi hosts were running the same versions, this error was confusing. The latest version of VMware Tools was also already installed in the template, which made this error message even more confusing. To troubleshoot, I converted the template back to a virtual machine and powered it on. After logging in, it was pretty obvious that something was wrong with the VMware Tools since the mouse behavior was very erratic. I uninstalled the VMware Tools, reboot the VM, and installed the VMware Tools again. After another reboot and power down, I converted the virtual machine back to a template. This time the deploy template wizard worked as expected and a new VM was deployed from the template.
This is another one of those weird events that I figured I would post in hopes of maybe helping others that run across it.
Brian
