vSphere Virtual Machine Administration - Documentation - VMware

vSphere Virtual Machine Administration
Creating and Managing Customization Specifications in the vSphere Web Client
You can create and manage customization specifications for Windows and Linux guest operating systems.
Customization specifications are XML files that contain guest operating system settings for virtual machines.
When you apply a specification to the guest operating system during virtual machine cloning or deployment,
you prevent conflicts that might result if you deploy virtual machines with identical settings, such as duplicate
computer names.
vCenter Server saves the customized configuration parameters in the vCenter Server database. If the
customization settings are saved, the administrator and domain administrator passwords are stored in
encrypted format in the database. Because the certificate used to encrypt the passwords is unique to each
vCenter Server system, if you reinstall vCenter Server or attach a new instance of the server to the database,
the encrypted passwords become invalid. You must reenter the passwords before you can use them.
Create a Customization Specification for Linux in the vSphere Web Client
Use the Guest Customization wizard to save guest operating system settings in a specification that you can
apply when cloning virtual machines or deploying from templates.
Prerequisites
Ensure that all requirements for customization are met. See “Guest Operating System Customization
Requirements,” on page 79.
Procedure
1 From the vSphere Client Home inventory page, select Rules and Profiles > Customization Specification
Manager.
2 Click the Create a New specification icon.
3 Select Linux from the Target VM Operating System drop-down menu.
4 On the Set Registration Information page, type the virtual machine owner’s name and organization and
click Next.
5 Enter the guest operating system's computer name.
The operating system uses this name to identify itself on the network. On Linux systems, it is called the
host name.
Option Action
Enter a name a Type a name.
The name can contain alphanumeric characters and the hyphen (-)
character. It cannot contain periods (.) or blank spaces and cannot be
made up of digits only. Names are not case-sensitive.
b (Optional) To ensure that the name is unique, select Append a numeric
value to ensure uniqueness. This action appends a hyphen followed by
a numeric value to the virtual machine name. The name is truncated if
it exceeds 63 characters when combined with the numeric value.
Use the virtual machine name The computer name that vCenter Server creates is identical to the name of
the virtual machine on which the guest operating system is running. If the
name exceeds 63 characters, it is truncated.
Enter a name in the Clone/Deploy
wizard
Generate a name using the custom
application configured with vCenter
Server
6 Enter the Domain Name for the computer and click Next.
The vSphere Client prompts you to enter a name after the cloning or
deployment is complete.
Enter a parameter that can be passed to the custom application.
50 VMware, Inc.