Recovering from Guest Network Customization Errors

Guest network customization is a long-running operation with several potential failure points. If you encounter a failure, consider the following steps.

The guest network customization engine holds a lock on the VirtualMachineGuestCustomizationManager interface while it applies changes to the guest. A failure during customization or while restarting the network might leave a hung process or an orphaned lock.

If any step of the network cutsomization returns an error, use the VirtualMachineGuestCustomizationManager.AbortCustomization_Task method to stop all running instances of the customization engine and to release the lock.

To troubleshoot a failure, you can examine the log file used by the VirtualMachineGuestCustomizationManager.CustomizeGuest_Task method. The log file is on the host file system at /var/log/vmware-gosc/instant_clone_customization.log for Linux hosts.

When you abort a guest customization operation, the guest network can be left in an inconsistent state. After the abort operation completes, you should check your customization settings and retry the CustomizeGuest_Task method in case of transient error conditions.

Note: When you use the VirtualMachineGuestCustomizationManager, the customization procedure tolerates vMotion without failure.