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Creating Ideal Virtual Machine Templates

Wednesday, 29 November 2006 by Michel Roth

Andrew Dugdell has written an article on creating Virtual Machine templates: "Of recent there has been some discussion (both internally at work, on the web, and in the general community) on building Virtual Machine templates. So I thought I'd jam out a quick (but sizable) blog entry on what works for me."

Anyway, I have two libraries I maintain: "Sterile Golden Masters" and "Working Templates". My descriptions of each aren't entirely accurate, but it works for me. But before I get too much further, think of the Templates as copies of the Golden Master - but tweaked.

The Sterile Golden Masters
Each VM is built from slipstreamed media, using a manual, next, next finish install.
I use IDE drives within the VM for compatibility with VPC
There are 16 VMs in the library covering every OS/Service pack combo from NT4 to 2003R2 (and now Vista)
Each VM includes a copy of the i386 folder copied locally
Each VM includes a copy of all my favourite stand alone Utitities and Sysinternals Tools (Key point is all tools are stand alone EXEs and do not need to be installed, eg: robocopy)
Each VM includes a change log with all the settings to install the OS
Each VM does not have patches installed
The Virtual Machine Additions are not installed

I rarely use a copy of these images for testing (except under extreme circumstances with difficult vendors), they are rather a base for templates I build on top of. Each Golden Master is a clean, sterile, reproducible build with no software or patches installed of any kind. I zip each of the images up and burn them all to a double layer DVD. I go back to them maybe once or twice a year.

The Working Templates
Are copies of the Golden Masters
They all have the lastest production Virtual Machine Additions installed
Each VM has auto-login enabled, BGinfo configured, and assorted shell tweaks for convenience
Defragmented filesystem and pagefile
Each template includes a change log with all the settings, changes and tweaks applied
The Sysprep folder is pre-packed ready to go, but not applied (it's there, just in case)
Compacted with the precompactor iso

These guys are the templates that I take copies of and use everyday for testing and documenting "stuff". Although NT4 and 2000 support has officially ended, I still find myself using these templates every few months for something. So I guess I'll continue to use them until the need disappears.

Read more here.