How To Build An Effective Virtual Machine Template
Page 2 of 3
Making Changes to the VMX file
While the changes in this section are not required, they will help you identify things to change, and optimize when deploying the ‘template’ afterwards.
Now that you’ve navigated to the configuration file’s directory, delete all the files except for the following two files:
VMDK (Virtual Hard Disk)
VMX (Configuration File)
The configuration file has a generic name:
‘Windows XP Professional.vmx’
Change the name of the configuration file to:
‘winxpprosp2.vmx’
(notice the consistency thing again, here?)
Let’s open up the file, ‘winxpprosp2.vmx’ with notepad.
NOTE: I rearranged the items here myself prior to the screenshot, so that similar items are next to each other.
I’ve made a few edits, and I’ve made some additions. These work well for me. The only addition here that you may not want is
uuid.action = “keep”
. If you need each VM to have a unique UUID (say for testing R.I.S.), change this to ‘create’ instead of keep.
You do not need to add all these lines manually. You do not need to reorder the lines in the file (I do so for organization). For consistency I have also renamed the nvram line to read:
nvram = “winxpprosp2.nvram”
When you open your Virtual Machine, Click ‘Edit Virtual Machine Settings’ to bring up this window.
NOTE: I’ve made the Virtual Machine’s CD-ROM drive use an ISO image as CD-ROM media (this helps speed up the installation of the operating system.
Next, change the default behavior of USB devices to the Virtual Machine by clearing the checkbox shown to the right.
For Windows XP (you don’t need to do this for Windows NT, 2000, or 2003), add a Floppy Drive to the Virtual Machine.
NOTE: I point to an FLP file (this is the equivalent of and ISO to a CD-ROM). You can download the correct FLP file from VMware’s website
http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/#drivers
You can see some of the options we’ve already tuned in the VMX file here in the GUI interface.
If you look into the example VMX file a couple of pages back, you will see the line:
powerType.powerOff = "soft"
This is the option relative to the screenshot on the right.
Shared folders can be useful, but NOT when you are building a template.
Shapshots are VERY useful, just NOT when building your template.
You can disable these features here to the right, but not when building a template.
More options here. Again, keep it simple when building your template.
Now the Virtual Machine is ready to load an operating system on it that you can use and prepare as a template Virtual Machine.
