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.

Linux Requirements

Customization of Linux guest operating systems requires that Perl is installed in the Linux guest operating system.

Verifying Customization Support for a Guest Operating System

To verify customization support for Windows operating systems or Linux distributions and compatible ESXi hosts, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility. You can use this online tool to search for the guest operating system and ESXi version. After the tool generates your list, click the guest operating system to see whether guest customization is supported.