Comments on: Basic things to do when creating a Microsoft Server Gold Build for use on a VMware ESX Template.

By: twadeus

twadeus — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:21:34 +0000

For Move CD drive mapping to Z has anyone tried B?

By: James Clements

James Clements — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:59:25 +0000

I always enable Remote Desktop because it is disabled by default

By: omfg

omfg — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:48:36 +0000

If you’re thin-provisioning (and I’m sure most of you will be), then be sure to run the awesome sdelfrag vbs script to clean up your drive as much as possible:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/01/04/vmware-consolidated-backup-and-deleted-files/

This will make your Gold image as tight as possible.

By: cookieme

cookieme — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:23:32 +0000

Any suggestions/ best practices for creating Windows XP Pro VMs?

By: Oli

Oli — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:02:20 +0000

Two of mine:

1) If the server will be used for file shares, create a folder called “data” and set permissions to administrators only. That way, newly-created subfolders will have sensible default permissions.

2) Create a reserve file on each volume using “fsutil file createnew x:\deleteme.dat 1000000000″. That way, if you fill up the disk you can delete the reserve file and then have some breathing space to fix the problem. Of course, proper monitoring would render this unnecessary. Be sure to exclude files called “deleteme.dat” from your backup job.

By: omfg

omfg — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:44:20 +0000

Right-click My Computer.
Click Properties.
Click the Advanced tab.
Click the Environment Variables tab.
Add a new variable in the System Variables box:

devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

Whilst this is most useful for P2V’d machines (not Gold Images) it’s still useful to be able to get rid of non-present hardware.