vCloud Director sysprep files

Had some fun running up a vCD server this past week so thought I'd post a quick memo to advise of the following changes in vCD between vCD 5.1 and vCD 5.5 regarding sysprep files.

I had been following some excellent blogs on the vCD 5.1 install process from Kendrick Coleman (Install vCD 5.1 & vCD Networking) and applying this to my vCD 5.5 installation.  When I tried to follow the process copy the sysprep files over to the vCD cell I hit a snag as there was no script to run to generate the sysprep files required. This, it turns out, is because in 5.5 they have improved this process and now you simply need to create the directories and place the sysprep files into the directory and away you go.  Not even a service restart is required to start customizing older OSes through vCD.

The folder locations in vCD 5.5 should be (extract taken from the VMware install document for vCD 5.5 - which I should have read more keenly it seems!):

Procedure:

1. Log in to the target server as root.
2. Change directory to $VCLOUD_HOME/guestcustomization/default/windows.
   [root@cell1 /]# cd /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/guestcustomization/default/windows
3. Create a directory named sysprep.
   [root@cell1 /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/guestcustomization/default/windows]# mkdir sysprep
4. For each guest operating system that requires Sysprep binary files, create a subdirectory of
   $VCLOUD_HOME/guestcustomization/default/windows/sysprep.
   Subdirectory names are specific to a guest operating system and are case sensitive.
• Windows 2003 (32-bit) should be called svr2003
• Windows 2003 (64-bit) should be called svr2003-64
• Windows XP (32-bit) should be called xp
• Windows XP (64-bit) should be called xp-64
5. Copy the Sysprep binary files to the appropriate location on each vCloud Director server in the server group.
6. Ensure that the Sysprep files are readable by the user vcloud.vcloud.
   Use the Linux chown command to do this.
   [root@cell1 /]# chown -R vcloud.vcloud $VCLOUD_HOME/guestcustomization

When the Sysprep files are copied to all members of the server group, you can perform guest customization

on virtual machines in your cloud. You do not need to restart vCloud Director after the Sysprep files are copied.

So there you go...simple if you read the manuals properly in the first place :)