manage pending customization

[Humphry]

Hi, I'd like to know wether it's possible to remove a pending customization or modify it. Is it mandatory to start the virtual machine and wait until the customization applies or is it possible to modify it before appliying it? Is there any way to remove it when the customization is still pending?

Thanks in advance.

[admin · Accepted solution]

Hi,

As far as I understand your query, it seems that you would like to make changes in the guest customization once the clone API starts processing the customization and before it actually completes. This is not possible to do. Once you have submitted the customization spec to the Clone API, there's no way once can modify the same when the VM powers ON. After the power on,all the customizations take affect and get applied to the VM.

I would like to know your use case here of trying to perform this modification.

[Humphry]

Thanks AngelaS. I supposed that it wasn't possible to change the guest customization before it completes, but I wasn't sure.

Our case is as follows:

• A client applies for a new virtual server

• We have a group of preinstalled virtual machines that only needs the final configuration of the guest OS. So we take one of those preinstalled machines and customize it with the client preferred configuration.

• After this, we do a lot of external actions (not related with vsphere). If one of these actions fails, the process ends up with an error status and the virtual machine is not eventually assigned to that client, so it can be selected for another client.

If another client applies for a new virtual machine and the previous virtual machine is selected, an error arises saying that the virtual machine has a customizatin pending. So, as it's not possible to remove the pending customization, this virtual machine has to be removed, and a new virtual machine has to be selected to be assigned to that client.

[BenN]

Note also that if you delete a VM with a pending customization, it doesn't remove the "imcNNNN.tmp" file that's associated with the VM. This prevents the VMs directory from being deleted, and (if you do this often enough) really makes a mess of your datastore. I wish VMware would fix this.