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.