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Gamo
Contributor
Contributor

UUID's and location of Virtual Machine are identical over 50+ PC's

We are using VMWare Player on 50+ PC's to run an XP environment with some proprietary software. This works great.

The problem is that every Virtual Machine has the same MAC adres. This is why:

The location of each image is located in the same place on every PC (D:\).

The UUID in the SMBIOS of every PC is identical, because it is filled with the FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF value. This is not uncommon.

The MAC adres is generated with the combination of the image location en UUID, which in this case is always the same. Thus resulting in the same MAC addresses for each computer which causes networking problems.

I've looked into altering the UUID in the SMBIOS but this does not seem possible or do-able with so many PC's and new ones arriving in the future. Also it would not be possible to statically enter MAC addresses into .vmx files because this file is distributed across the 50 PC's.

So my question would be, is there a solution to this problem?

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RDPetruska
Leadership
Leadership

VMware Player should prompt you the first time you power on the guest whether you copied it or moved it... if you answer Copied, it will generate both a new UUID and a new MAC address for the virtual NIC(s).

You can assign static MAC addresses if you want to - make certain to follow the rules however. What are you using to create these VMs?

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Gamo
Contributor
Contributor

Yes I've been thinking about static MAC addresses, but I will have to manually alter 50+ .vmx files, and when a new image with different .vmx settings is made, I will have to do it again. And when an exta 50 computers are used I will have to do it 100 times!

If VMWare Player generates a new uuid.bios, it will use the uuid of the SMBIOS. This value is always the same after testing with different images. Together with a different location (because you cant (yes you can, but..) have two VMs in one location) you will get the new MAC. But the UUID.bios of a VM is always the same value for a PC.

The software used for making the image is Ghost Solution Suit 2.0.

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Gamo
Contributor
Contributor

A BIOS update did not change a thing to the UUID of the motherboard. Also, Sysprep cannot help me in this question. So I am still stuck at this problem.

A little kick to bring it under the attention again.

Would anyone know of a way to let the VM use the physical MAC address of a PC instead of the UUID? That would solve this problem aswell.

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Gamo
Contributor
Contributor

Because we are now manually adding UUID.bios entries, I would like to kick this topic.

I'm really interested if there is a solution for this problem, I can only imagine this will not be the first or the last time.

Many thanks to those interested.

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jokke
Expert
Expert

And instead of manually removing 3 lines and adding 2 lines on each vmx, I am sure this is scriptable.

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