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Joining a VMware vCenter Lab Manager template to a domain (1007491)
Details
You can set VMware vCenter Lab Manager 3.0 (or higher) to allow a virtual machine created in Lab Manager to automatically join a domain, based on the template configuration.
Solution
Following are the three possible methods of setting Lab Manager to support the domain join.
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Option 1: For Windows versions except Windows 2000. This method does not work for Windows 2000.
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Copy netdom.exe to the virtual machine template. The netdom.exe is part of the resource kit from Microsoft that provides a command line to join a machine to a domain.
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Spawn netdom.exe with appropriate parameters from SetupComplete.cmd file. When you create a configuration virtual machine from this template, at end of the sysprep process, the commands specified inside SetupComplete.cmd are automatically run.
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Option 2:
- Set the customization script on the virtual machine template that needs to join the domain when the command line passed to it is postcustomization.
- The customization script is a batch file that can be set on the virtual machine template that gets called with precustomization and postcustomization command lines before and after the default customization process.
- For more information on adding a customization script to a template, refer to the Customizing Guest Customization section in the User's Guide for Lab Manager 3.0.
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Option 3: This method works only on Windows Vista and Windows 2008.
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Inside the virtual machine template, create the following folder structure: %windir%\Setup\Scripts.
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Create SetupComplete.cmd file under the Scripts directory.
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Copy the netdom.exe to the template and specify the appropriate netdom.exe command line in %windir%\Setup\Scripts\SetupComplete.cmd.
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