Create VM Customization Specifications for Windows Server 2019
In this post we will see on how you can create VM Customization Specifications policy in VMware vCenter for a Windows Server 2019 VM Template.
VM Customization Specifications allows you to configure few options for your Guest OS which is running inside your VM. You can configure things like Timezone, Admin Password, Licesing, Network etc. The most important requirement to apply this policies is, that VMware tools are installed in the respective Templates. I also recommend to update the Templates periodically.
You can only create VM Customization Specifications with VMware vCenter.
Allright now let us start:
Fist Login to your VMware vCenter environment, click on the Menu or Burger button on the top and select Policies and Profiles. After that click on VM Customization Specifications. As you can see, I have already created a policy for Linux OS:
But now let us create a new policy by clicking the +new button. Provide a Name & (optional) a Description, choose the vCenter and the wished Guest OS. In our case it will be Windows, let Generate a new security identity (SID) checked and click next:
In the next step you can set informations about the Owner and organzation of the VM. So whenever you apply this policy to any VM, this details will be set for those. After setting the informations click next:
Now you can specify the VM name. I always choose Enter a name in the Clone/Deploy wizard, because whenever I clone a VM from my Templates, I want so specify the name directly from the wizard:
If you are going to use Windows Server like in this Tutorial you can provide directly the license to your VMs by entering it here:
In the next step you can set the administrator password for your Windows Server VMs. You can skip the manually setting of the Admin password.
(optional) You can check the Automatically logon as Administrator box, so your cloned VM will automatically login as Administrator as soon as you power on the VM:
Now you can specify the right Time zone:
You can also specify any commands you want your VM to use at startup:
In the next step you can configure the Network for your VMs. This skips the manually configuration when you are logged into the VM:
Last but not least you can let the cloned VM join to a Windows Server Domain or specific Workgroup another task which you don’t need to do afterwards:
Review all the configuration and click Finish to save the VM Customization Specifications policy. Now you will see in the overview the newly created policy.
That is it from this Tutorial. If you have any questions please use the comments section. 🙂