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.'
