Proper Template Creation

[Mulliganx]

Looking at setting up a proper template.  I found the below resources available.

The difference between these two templates is the way sysprep is used. 

How does everyone here use the sysprep?  Going directly to the sysprep > OOBE experience, or as mentioned in the Jason Samuel Blog - Created an unattended.xml first and then sysprep > OOBE?

Thanks for any advice / resources

[vmroyale]

Hello and welcome to the communities.

Note: Discussion successfully moved from VMware ESXi 5 to VMware vCenter™ Server

[markdjones82]

I personally believe you should build your windows machine with everything you need that is able to be cloned without issues.  Power it down and convert to template.  Then, you let vmware customization do the sysprepping.  This is the best way to automate.

[Mulliganx]

Ok thanks.  Are we able to join the master Template to a domain before cloning?   Or is this not recommended - I cannot find anything that mentions this.

[markdjones82]

I remove mine from the domain before converting to a template.  I would not recommend having it on the domain.

[Mulliganx]

Ok thank you.  The reason why I was confused about the "Sysprep" licensing setup on the template is because I did not put a license key onto my current template. 

Microsoft is giving me the counterfeit warnings and says "This copy of Windows is not genuine"

As I clone from this template I license the cloned servers.  Unless I should license the template itself.

[markdjones82]

We licensed our template, but use a KMS server so it auto licenses.  It shouldn't hurt to license the template with an actual license espectially if using a volume license key,