Deployment of a 2008 R2 template, without sysprep?

[drheim]

Hey guys,

I know it has always been common practice to run sysprep to create a unique SID for new servers.  I recently read an article by Mark Russonivich of Microsoft that said this is really not required, unless there is an application or something specific that has issues with this.  He mentions WSUS might have issues, but can anyone else list known issues with skipping the sysprep step?

http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2009/11/03/3291024.aspx

Thanks,

Dan

[Fred_vBrain]

Hi,

why do you want to skip the sysprep? It's an automatic process when using customization specification.

regards,

Fred

[Kahonu84]

Aloha,

I too have read that. I have no other resources to point you to other than my own experience. I have been using VMWare since '07 and have never used SYSPREP. 80 Windows servers ('03 and '08) later I've had zero problems. I currently have a very generic 2k8 VM. I clone the VM, re-name and re-IP it, activate Windows then give it to the analyst. Done and done.

Bill

[rcporto]

Why not Sysprep if this is a step recommended by Microsoft ?

The Microsoft policy for disk duplication of Windows installations

I use Sysprep (including answer files) in all Microsoft Windows templates.

[drheim]

The sysprep steps seem to take a lot of time and I have not done it for my VMs(maybe around 20 servers) over past couple of years.  Just did not know if I should send out an email and advise other VMware guys in my company to do the same.  I know there might be problems with some software packages, but had read in that MS thread that the computer sid is not referenced outside of the computer. In my experience, as long as the base image is not joined to the domain, everything seems fine.  Once they join the domain, they get the domain sid followed by the relative ID(I think), but if you run psgetsid from those computers you can see the domain sid is unique.  Just wanting to see what everyone else is doing.

Dan