Create a Guest OS Profile – step 5

You’re reading the blog post series ”Creating a Windows 2012 VM Template with SCVMM 2012“

In step 4 we finalized our VM Template. That saves us about 80% of our time when we are asked to deploy a VM with Windows 2012 installed. In the next two steps, I’ll show you how to create Guest OS Profile and Hardware Profile to save even more time.

A Guest OS Profile is one of the neat customization profiles that can save us from having to create a variety of VM Templates, or having to create hardly readable VB Scripts to customize an OS.
In your VMM console, navigate to Library and expand the Profiles item.

Then right click Guest OS Profile and choose Create Guest OS Profile

A wizard will popup, asking you for a name. Choose something like “Default Windows 2012 profile”. You’ll be able to modify name and settings at a later time.
When you click through the wizard, most of the settings will speak for themselves. However, there are a few options that should have your attention:

– Operating System: choose the correct OS. This will have impact on later options.

– Identity Information: Default is an asterisk, this will choose a random name. You can also decide to use #. This will number the VM. For example, you can fill in WIN2012-###. This will generate computer names WIN2012-001, WIN2012-002, WIN2012-003 and so forth.

– Roles and Features: for a “Default Windows 2012 profile”, this does not really apply. However, If you’re about to create a “Windows 2012 webserver” profile, you could install the Web Server role and the BITS Feature

– Domain / Workgroup: allows you to join a domain, but not a specific Organizational Unit. To create the computer account in a specific OU in Active Directory, you should use an unattend.xml file. More information here: http://serverfault.com/questions/498164/join-vm-to-specific-active-directory-ou-using-system-center-vmm-2012-guest-os-pr/498165#498165

So, once you’re done creating the Guest OS Profile, click OK. We’re now ready for step 6: Creating a Hardware Profile!