VMware Guest Deployment

[RParker]

This is a remedial question I know.. but when I deploy Windows 2008 / 2012 R2 the server guest name appends with -0.

It's an existing name , but it's WORKSTATION.  If I power off the existing machine, and then redeploy that's when the problem occurs. I understand if its domain because those have to be unique, but what triggers WORKSTATION.  are the VM tools doing a netbios lookup on the network somehow..  There is only 1 Windows server name live on the network with the same name at any given time (I may not be the brightest bulb but I do know basic stuff).

Obviously if I create a fresh new machine it's fine, it's only when I redeploy the problem occurs.. And it's only for Windows so I suspect it must be something to do with cached network or arp table..

Has anyone else seen this?

[bluefirestorm]

By Workstation, I take it you mean the Windows service named Workstation (aka LanmanWorkstation, aka executable path svchost -k NetworkService). Have seen this sort of duplicate names problem on NT3.51/NT4.0 machines (some years before the existence of VMware as a company).

It is possible that VMware Tools causes it although I cannot say with 100% certainty as I haven't seen the source code. But anytime there is remote console access or RDP access, the vmware.log of a VM would show stuff like GuestRPC which hints at Microsoft RPC calls are involved for a Windows VM. RPC generally would involve NetBIOS names.

Therefore it could be a NetBIOS name that has been registered/broadcast.

You could try to clear NetBIOS name cache

nbtstat -R

nbtstat -RR