Changes/problems with Sysprep and w2003 templates between VC 2.02 and VC 2.5 u3

[dinny]

Hiya,

I recently upgraded from VC 2.02 to VC 2.5u3

I used sysprep and templates to create some w2003 sp2 VMs in the past and expected to find no real differences - however so far I have found four differences.

This post isn't really a question - it is to alert people to the differences - which as far as I'm aware are not documented.

But if anyone else knows of other differences I'll happily award points for posting about them...

First issue that I found and reported was:

Disk partitions drive letters are not necessarily maintained across templates - (have been told by vmware that it is a known issue with MS sysprep).

i.e. if template has C drive, R drive cd rom and d drive - after cloning there will now be a C drive, D drive for cd rom and E drive (This used to work perfectly with VC 2.02)

Any registry settings to software on the D drive will obviously now be invalid...

Three further problems that I have found are (as yet no response from VMware on any of them):

1. Using the "Identification section in the customisation

JoinDomain=mydomain

DomainAdmin=testid

DomainAdminPassword=secret

MachineObjectOU="OU=Servers,DC=mydomain,DC=co,DC=uk"

The "MachineObjectOU" key/value now seems to now be ignored.

(This used to work perfectly with VC 2.02)

As far as I can tell instead of using sysprep VMware now use their own method of adding the VM to the domain - and seem to just ignore the MachineObjectOU key - and perhaps any other keys in the "identification" section?

The computer objects are now just added to the default "computers" OU in AD

2. One of my apps uses a crypto machine key in :

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\ApplicationData\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys

Strangely in my environment this key needs to be identical across each app server in an application cluster.

It is now unique on each VM generated from the template (In VC 2.02 it used to be identical)

I guess this is a more logical behaviour - but it is definitely different - maybe an undocumented bug fix?

3. wsus client ID

The reg key:

HKLM\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\windowsupdate\susclientid

used to be generated uniquely on each VM - hence each VM registered independently with the wsus console.

Now each susclientid is identical on all cloned VMs - so only the last VM to authenticate with the wsus console is shown as existing.

(in VC 2,02 all these susclientids were created uniquely)

All of these issues can be scripted round if they are expected - but I certainly wasn't expecting any differences - and it was a surprise to find that the process now seems to be so different...

I can only assume that the way sysprep was used in the past (by VC 2.02) and the way it is used now in VC 2.5u3 are pretty different (as the actual sysprep version itself is unchanged.

Hope this is helpful

Cheers

Dinny