How ConfigSpecs, Sysprep, etc all work when Cloning a VM in vCO

[zdog59]

Hello everyone,

After following the trail of bread crumbs and plenty of Google searches, I was wondering if anyone would like to help with an overview of how sysprep answerfiles/inf/xml are handled when cloning a VM with config, creds and nic in vCO.  My understanding, is that the diffe Config specs create an object reference to the traditional sysprep anwser file/inf. (CustomizationSysprep).  I'm trying to figure out the process where the information from the object gets to the sysprep app.   (Is it copied as a txt file to the location of the answer file)  In addition, are all the values for sysprep identified in the object or are there some default values.

A bit of background, I'm investigating after Win2K12 builds start failing and it appears that the IPv6 value sysprep is reading is invalid.: TCPIP: Consumer 2 REJECTED the value named 'DhcpEnabled' (under 'Ipv6Settings') with status 0x78

That being said, it appears that IPv6 is being enables and set to DHCP. (my guess is that is the default) So now I've very interested in the full process of how spec info get to the cloned box and all the fun stuff in between.

Thanks in Advance for any help and apologies if this has already been covered here.

Mike Z.

[zdog59]

ok, no takers?   How about this?

What creates the unattend.xml?  in the clone process?

[robrtb12]

Hi zdog59,

I've been working with vCO over the last 3 years with the majority of it focused on Cloning and Customizing.  The different sysprep/customization parameters (productid, joinDomain, dhcp, ipAddress, etc.) are passed into object VcCustomizationSpec. This object is passed into a Clone spec VcVirtualMachineCloneSpec, which in turn is passed to create the clone VM (v5: applyStorageDrsRecommendation_Task , v4: cloneVM_Task). 

My assumption is that vCenter then parses the VcCustomizationSpec, creates the required sysprep/autoinstallation file type, injects it into the VM and upon power-on executes the sysprep/autoinstall.

I clone Win2012 and have no issues however, we don't use DHCP so I set that parameter to false/No.