6.5.1

Table Of Contents
Procedure
1 Review the virtual machine settings and make changes by clicking Back to go back to the relevant
page.
2 Click Finish.
The virtual machine appears in the vSphere Web Client inventory.
Customizing Guest Operating Systems
When you clone a virtual machine or deploy a virtual machine from a template, you can customize the
guest operating system of the virtual machine. You can change the computer name, network settings, and
license settings.
Customizing guest operating systems helps prevent against conflicts that occur if virtual machines with
identical settings are deployed, for example conflicts due to duplicate computer names.
You can specify the customization settings by launching the Guest Customization wizard during the
cloning or deployment process. Alternatively, you can create customization specifications, which are
customization settings stored in the vCenter Server database. During the cloning or deployment process,
you can select a customization specification to apply to the new virtual machine.
Use the Customization Specification Manager to manage customization specifications you create with the
Guest Customization wizard.
Guest Operating System Customization Requirements
To customize the guest operating system, you must configure the virtual machine and guest to meet
VMware Tools and virtual disk requirements. Other requirements apply, depending on the guest operating
system type.
VMware Tools Requirements
The latest version of VMware Tools must be installed on the virtual machine or template to customize the
guest operating system during cloning or deployment. For information about VMware Tools support
matrix, see the VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes at
http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/sim/interop_matrix.php.
Virtual Disk Requirements
The guest operating system being customized must be installed on a disk attached as SCSI node 0:0 in
the virtual machine configuration.
Windows Requirements
Customization of Windows guest operating systems requires the virtual machine to be running on an
ESXi host running version 3.5 or later.
vSphere Virtual Machine Administration
VMware, Inc. 50