VI3 Template's have IP's and DNS entries? How can I remove these?

[tange1]

Pardon if this is a simple question, I'm new to this. Existing templates created by someone else in my team did not show IP's or DNS names in the VI client. I took one of those machines, converted it to a machine, powered it on, made some changes then re-ran sys prep on the machines and finally converted them back to templates. Now the templates show IP's and DNS names of what I called them when I had temporarily converted them to machines to make some changes.

Is there any potential impact to this? We use an answers file when deploying a virtual machine from the template so I know the incorrect test IP doesn't get passed through; it takes the IP I supply through the wizard.

What concerns me is if we were to convert the template to machine and power it on it would be holding the old IP last used when the template was a machine. This could cause a duplicate IP issue, correct?

How can I remove the IP and DNS info from the template?

Thanks!

[BryanMcC · Accepted solution]

You usually dont have to worry about these at all as the names and such should change during the customization portion. I use a VLAN that has DHCP on my network for building templates and they always pickup IPs and register in DNS but this is irrevlevant when I am using the customization wizard and renaming the machine anyway.

I would recommend that if you have IPs that are picked up using DHCP then you shoudl be fine.. If they are somehow hard coded, which I doubt because it sounds as if the IP was picked up with DHCP and then dynamically registered with DNS, then just remove them and set them up for DHCP.

I convert my templates to machines all of the time for updates and software maintenance and I never have had any problems.

Good luck!

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[virtualdud3]

Have you installed Sysprep within your VirtualCenter server?

Download Sysprep 1.1 -

Then, extract to:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VirtualCenter\sysprep\1.1

You'll now be able to "customize"/change the DNS name of the VM while deploying it from a template.

Regarding the IP address, I just configure my "base" template with a dynamic/DHCP IP address, and then change the IP address of the deployed VM to whatever I want it to be.

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[BryanMcC]

Sorry.. I somehow thought you were alreay aware of the sysprep/customization wizard.

virtualdud3.. You are the man!