Today, I want to highlight feature of VMware that up until recently I had not worked with much.

VM Customization and OVF Templates

With the COVID-19 Pandemic all organizations have been moving to WFH and remote work. This encourages more and more users to use products like VMware Horizon, Citrix Desktop, or other solutions. I recently found myself building out more Virtual Machines in my environment. This initially required a lot of manual work. setting the Computer Name, adding to the domain, setting the ip, and etc. There has to be a better way, and thankfully there is. If you are like me, this will mostly be new to you. I just want to highlight a few places you may get caught up.

1. Windows Sysprep

Windows Sysprep is a feature built into Windows. This can be found at C:/Windows/System32/Sysprep/. You will need to configure your Windows Virtual Machine with all the apps for the golden image.

2.Templates

This is found under Menu>”Policies and Profiles”. Here you will need to setup your VM Customization

This Includes: -Windows AD Creds to Add to Domain -Local Admin for Golden Image -Scripts

3. Candy Crush

Yes, Candy Crush. Apparently in the latest Windows 10 image Candy Crush is included as an option to download by default from the Windows Store. I found myself getting the below error running SysPrep.

I scratched my head, and did what any good admin would do. Look at the logs, then Google it.

There is was, CANDY CRUSH.. Why is Candy Crush in my Windows? Well that was the issue I faced. I had to break out a powershell script and run the below commands to remove it.

Remove-Appxpackage -allusers | where {$_.name -like }"*Candy*"}

4. Deploying

Remember when you place the VM in your library You need to select the “Customize VM” option.

This is just a few things I wanted to highlight. Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Stay safe, wear a mask.