vCloud Director and guest customization

Guest customization (specifically Windows 2003) is done a little differently in vCloud Director.

While you still create a properly-named directory tree containing the sysprep files, you then run a script that combines all of the Windows sysprep files into one CAB for later use.

Step one is to copy the exiting .cab contents to a directory structure on the vCD cell using something like WinSCP (remember to use the “root” login, not a vCD user)

Here I’ve created it under /opt/sysprep.

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Next run the script to consolidate the contents to one .cab file:

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/deploymentPackageCreator/createSysprepPackage.sh /SysprepDirectoryPath

This will create a file under /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/guestcustomization named windows_deployment_package_sysprep.cab

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If you open up that file you’ll see the existing sysprep tree structure mirrored.

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Note: you should probably leave the sysprep files on the cell for use later – if you only add 32-bit files now and then delete them when you go to add 64-bit later the resulting .cab will only have the 64-bit files!

Happy Clouding.

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