How to Build an Effective Virtual Machine Template
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How to Build an Effective Virtual Machine Template
By Mark Gabryjelski published: Tuesday, November 04 2008
People have been embracing Virtual Machines for quite some
time now. One question that I still hear
after seven years is "...how do I build a Virtual Machine Template
correctly?" A similar article was
written by me 2.5 years ago which received quite a few great compliments, and
with all the new features in the workstation based products, it felt
appropriate to update this to take advantage of those new features.
A Virtual Machine Template will be a Virtual Machine,
configured by you, which will be prepared for Rapid Deployment. Rapid Deployment means being able to deploy a
new pre-configured Virtual Machine in 5-15 Minutes, depending on the methods
(described below), you choose.
We will be working with Windows XP SP3, and covering VMware
Fusion 2.0 (build 116369) as well as VMware Workstation 6 (build 118166). It is assumed that you understand how to
install Windows XP Professional, as this will be the operating system
configured as the 'template.'
As we build our template, we will go through the following
steps:
