Provisionig a new VDI fails (fails at customization)

[varmap]

Hi All,

  First of all i am fairly new to VDI. My friends who are providing a solution/advise please try to be little descriptive on your answers.

  This is the scenario, we have a golden image that has been used for sometime now in building up new VDI's. we had this new requirement to develop a new image from the user's VDI (which is really a bad idea). The whole point is to use this image for the future VDI deployments.

  I had to do the cleanup of that user's VDI and then convert it to a template, then used this template. When using this template/image for the new deployments i get this message (see the attached file) and the customization fails. The system is ready in the VDI but without any customization ( doesn't join the domain). i got this error from the events in the web console.

OS: windows 7 sp1

      Vmware view 4.6

Steps I tried:

Uninstalled VMware view agent (did reg cleanup too), Vmware tools , rebooted, installed vmware tools, rebooted, installed VMware view agent , rebooted  - still the same error

Verified the windows 7 hotfix - already installed

windows upto date.

did the sysprep registry hack.did the registry cleanup too when cleaning the users VDI.

I did this 10 times and i got the same error all the 10 times. exception being once it joined the domain or worked fine.

Any ideas? did i miss on anything?? please help me with your thoughts.

Thanks,

Varma

[netjim66]

Here's what I'd do:

1. Stop provisioning on the pool.
2. Clone the users VDI, then logged in and removed it from the domain.
3. Change the machine name.
4. Do not sysprep.
5. Make sure View Agent is installed and running.
6. Remove NIC
7. Add new NIC
8. Make sure new NIC is in the right VLAN as the other VMs you have.
9. Rename this machine with an "_VM" at the end.
10. Delete old template you have that isn't working, but note the name.
11. Run the "CLONE TO TEMPLATE" on your "_VM", and name the template the same as the old template you deleted.
12. Now you have a template and a VM. You can update the VM and never bother to convert the template to VM since it messes it all up.
13. In the View Pool, make sure the Pool is pointing to the template (just to be sure).
14. Create a new customization wizard and verify the user name and password you are using can add machines to AD. Keep the customization as simple as possible.
15. Go into AD and remove any old PC names.
16. Delete any "messed up" VMs in View.
17. Enable the provisioning in pool, and see the results.

[varmap]

thanks for the reply. I have tried most of the steps earlier but have a question before trying this process.

If i am not doing a sysprep i would end up with the SID sitting on the template. Did you mean to get that sysprep done in customization? what we follow is to get the template ready for deploying, so sysprep and other means of cleanup are done and converted to a template so it is ready for the deployments. Does itr make any sense? Please advise.

Thanks

[dales123]

For traditional infrastructure vm's then yes the sysprep is completed as a last step before conversion to a template. However within View when you select quick prep ( which is the recommended approach in 99% of scenario's) it performs just enough to ensure that active directory see's each VM as a separate computer so it performs a minimal sysprep.

Its not a full sys prep but is just enough in most cases, where this might fall down is certain applications might require a full sysprep but its fairly unusual as far as my experience is concerned.