You can customize the network settings in the guest operating system with the help of the vSphere Web Services SDK. For instant clone operations, you must customize the clone without stopping the guest operating system.
Guest network customization for a running virtual machine involves several steps:
- Installation of the guest customization engine
- Disconnecting virtual NICs
- Customizing guest network settings
- Reconnecting virtual NICs
- Restarting the guest network
- Recovering from guest customization errors
- Running scripts for application-dependent customization
You can use these steps independently and you can run your own scripts in between steps as needed to customize, reset status, or restart processes in the guest.
Note: You must authenticate using credentials accepted by the guest operating system before you can run guest operations.
