Q: Sysprep of Win VMs from Clone:Template?

[fortechitsolutions]

Hi, this is possibly a bit 'silly' sounding, but I was hoping to elicit feedback from a few other people who may have some real experience with this.I've deployed various Windows VMs for various clients on various ProxVE versions over the past ~5 years (Win2003 through Win2008r2 mainly; some instances of virtual XP or Win7Pro as well and occasional SBS variants).I have never actually done 'sysprep' on a machine which is a clone:replica of another VM. Usually my drill, if I need 2 VMs of the same Base OS:-- install first one clean-- stop it cold, make a backup copy using vzdump and qmrestore-- prep a new copy from this 'backup/template'; assign new MAC address(es) to the NIC(s) on the new VM; spin it up; change its IP and hostname-- then spin up the original one from which it was based, and merrily go about business. (fix up licensing:key as required, install apps, etc)This approach has worked fine for me.Recently however a client asked me for comments on how important it is to run 'sysprep' on a VM after building it out using this kind of clone approach; ie, to change SID of the system.I was just curious if anyone has thoughts:comments around this.Thanks!Tim

 

[mir]

Isn't sysprep a way to change unique ID for an instance?
If answer to the above question is yes then I should think from a legal perspective sysprep is an absolute requirement, otherwise you are braking the Windows license.

 

[spirit]

>>Isn't sysprep a way to change unique ID for an instance?



Yes.

You can have some problem if you use a domain, as all vms have the same id, if you remove 1 vm from domain, all vms will be removed from the domain.
Also this can give some ntfs security problems, one local admin of 1 vm can have admin access to other vms too.