HP Matrix Operating Environment 7.2 Infrastructure Orchestration User Guide

Figure 1 Example of minimum required ESX VM Host free memory
Using Sysprep to customize Windows systems
Matrix infrastructure orchestration relies on Windows Sysprep to enable customization of Microsoft
Windows systems. Customization includes operations such as changing the host name, applying
the Windows license key on first boot, and setting the IP address. To automate Windows system
deployments and apply the Windows license key automatically, you must edit the Matrix OE-supplied
Sysprep.inf file. This edit enables Matrix OE to provision new Windows systems with no manual
interaction. Without this edit, a newly provisioned system halts during first boot waiting for a key.
Matrix infrastructure orchestration customizes the Windows OS for each Windows VM it provisions
by combining two sources of information and passing them to virtual machine management, which
passes the information to ESX and Hyper-V for customization. This information includes:
• Specific attributes from the service template, such as host name.
• The contents of the infrastructure orchestration Sysprep.inf file, a template for which is
located at ..\Program Files\HP\Matrix infrastructure orchestration\conf\
sysprep\Sysprep_sample.inf.
An administrator creates the new Sysprep.inf file and can edit Sysprep files based on the
sample file to specify additional customizations for Windows virtual machines, such as the Windows
license key. You can then use these files while creating IO templates with corresponding Windows
VMs.
NOTE: Do not delete or rename the Sysprep_sample.inf file.
Create one Sysprep file for each version of Microsoft Windows, for example:
• Copy Sysprep_sample.inf to Sysprep_w2k3_32bit.inf.
• Copy Sysprep_sample.inf to Sysprep_w2k3_64bit.inf.
• Copy Sysprep_sample.inf to Sysprep_w2k8.inf.
• Copy Sysprep_sample.inf to Sysprep_w2k8r2.inf.
• Edit the product key and any other needed customization in the file.
• If the EncryptedAdminPassword attribute is set to yes, values provided to the
AdminPassword attributes must be encrypted password values.
If autologon is also enabled, the EncryptedAutoLogonPassword attribute must be set
with an encrypted password also (for HyperV VMs only). Microsoft System Image Manager
must be used to created the encrypted password for HyperV VMs. VMware VCenter must be
used to create encrypted passwords for VMware VM guests. The VCenter server used to create
encrypted passwords for VMware VM guests must be the same one used by the infrastructure
orchestration CMS for the VM guest deployment.
• To cause IO to automatically join new virtual machines to a Windows domain, add the clear
text domain administrator credentials to the Sysprep.inf file. IO cannot automatically join
a new virtual machine to a Windows domain if EncryptedAdminPassword is set to yes.
If the credentials are not provided in the Sysprep.inf file, select “None” or “Workgroup”
46 Installation and configuration