Windows Server 2012 Guest Customization

[Optic_Nerve]

Hi All,

Has anyone managed to get guest customization of Windows Server 2012 working?  From what I can tell it doesn't work at all.

I am running the latest version of everything (vCenter 5.1, ESXi 5.1).  I created a brand new VM, chose Windows Server 2012 as the guest type (which automatically makes it EFI instead of BIOS) and installed Windows Server 2012 and the guest tools - all working OK.  I then shut down the guest and converted it to a template.

I am then deploying a new guest from the template and using a guest customization specification which I also created from scratch - the guest customization is very simple doing the standard stuff (like naming the OS the same as the guest, setting our company name and prompting the user for an IP address).  Nothing fancy.

The new guest is created as expected and then I power it on.  VMware obviously "injects" something into the OS at this point (like the sysprep file) and what is meant to happen is the OS boots up and then a minute or two later it reboots and does the sysprep routine with the injected sysprep file.  This works fine with Windows 2008 R2.

With Windows Server 2012 it just sits there forever and never reboots - the guest customization simply doesn't run.  If I logon to the server I can see that VMware has successfully created c:\sysprep and injected sysprep.xml and guestcustutil.exe into the folder.  It just never actually uses them.

Any ideas?  Is this working for anyone else?

Cheers,

David

[glennvelsol]

Alteradmin, did you ever figure this out? i'm seeing the EXACT same thing. I'm trying to deploy windows 8.1 using os customization to deploy full clones in horizon and it doesn't seem to join the domain, rename the machine, and disables the local admin account.

[aneverov]

Hi,

Disabled local admin account can be caused by sysprep on certain versions of Windows. Not prompted to set Administrator password at logon after Sysprep :

"When you run the sysprep /generalize command on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, the built-in administrator account password is reset. The Sysprep tool only clears the built-in administrator account’s password for server editions, not for client editions. The next time the computer starts, Setup displays a prompt for a password"

With regards to joining the domain, we have a few troubleshooting best-practices:

- before running customization: try to join the domain manually via UI, run 'ping <domain_controller_ip>', run 'ping <domain_controller_name>', run 'nslookup <domain_controller_name>'

- to make sure the above commands work, the domain controller must be resolvable by static or DHCP-suggested DNS servers

- the most robust environment setup is when DHCP-suggested DNS servers can resolve the domain controller by name, even if you use 'static' settings (because NICs may be reset to DHCP during the customization process in order to workaround sysprep issues with clearing old settings)

- while joining the domain, it's not recommend to mix DHCP addresses and static DNS settings (not possible via UI, but is possible via API)

Hope that helps. If not, please open an SR.

Thanks,

Andrii

[jholzhause_add]

We're having exact the same issue.

The bug is not fixed in 5.5.

We have to reboot each windows 8 vm manually.

When does a fix come out? ....

[aneverov]

Hi,

Please collect the following OS log folders and open an SR:

%WINDIR%\Temp\vmware-imc

%WINDIR%\Panther

%WINDIR%\Debug

Thanks,

Andrii

P.S.

%WINDIR%\Debug\netsetup.log file will usually provide the most valuable information for issues when joining the domain