VMWare Machine Cloning

Is anyone familiar with cloning VM's and if so do you know if this functionality is availble in the free version of VMWare Server?

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Comments

dynamik

I'm really not that familiar with server, and Workstation and Server are not allowed to be installed on the same machine (I wonder if I can install server on a VM in Workstation...).

Anyway, I don't think that it has a "clone" feature like Workstation does (if it does, they don't include in the index of their documentation). However, you can probably just duplicate (copy/paste) the VM folder of the machine you want to clone.

colebert

Can't speak to cloning in Server, but I have a piece of advice about cloning...

I was setting up a lab for 291 and was playing with SUS. I installed XP VM and ran all the updates and configured it how I wanted it, than clones two more instances for my simulations. But only one machine would show up in WSUS and each one would knock the other out of the list.

Turns out that not ONLY did I need to give my machines new SIDs, but there is a specific frinterprint Windows Updates gives to each machine when it connects for updates. So I had to blow that away as well to get WSUS to work right.

Just FYI.

kingpeter

Nice one, thanks for the advice

Thacker

Our company has volume licensing for XP.. so what I did was create a base XP build and a base server build. Once I got it exactly like I wanted I ran sysprep on it and would shut them down. After they were sysprepped I moved their folder to an IMAGES folder. I then would simply clone the machine via vmware workstation. So when I boot up the cloned machine I can create a new machine name.. this also creates a new SID which is necessary for many things...

mgeorge

You can use sysprep for this to generate a new machine name and new sid

Their is a program out there called "newsid" as well.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897418.aspx

colebert

Guys, you're missing the point of my post.

The SID change doesn't solve your WSUS problem.

sprkymrk

colebert wrote:

Guys, you're missing the point of my post.

The SID change doesn't solve your WSUS problem.

But there is a simple WSUS SID that is even easier to blow away with a simple batch file.

net stop wuauserv 

reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate /v SusClientID 
reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate /v AccountDomainSid 

net start wuauserv 

gpupdate /force 

wuauclt /resetauthorization /detectnow

And if you run sysprep BEFORE cloning (not after) it should solve the WSUS problem. It does in my environment, but it may differ between domains and workgroups, not sure.