ansible vwmare_guest, cloning Windows Server 2012R2

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1

Hello,

Can anyone tell me the steps I need to go through to get vmware_guest to successfully clone a template and have the clone join an existing domain?

Once the clone comes up, it never seems to have network access, so domain joining always fails.
A lot of times I have tried the network connection profile is marked as ‘public’ and isn’t given access to the internet.

I need to allocate a static IP

I found some link suggesting you have to use sysprep, but if you do so, you have to set language, product key etc manually and to be worthwhile the process needs to be fully automatic. Problems seem to start before that with the networking.

All suggestions gratefully received!

Tried with ansible 2.3 and 2.4 and two different windows templates, one created afresh from ISO .

Playbook below.

Jon

  • hosts: localhost
    gather_facts: true

  • hosts: new
    gather_facts: false
    vars:
    template: New2012R2Template
    vars_prompt:

  • name: ‘vmware_user’
    prompt: ‘Enter VMWare username’
    private: no

  • name: ‘vmware_cred’
    prompt: ‘Enter VMWare password’
    private: yes
    pre_tasks:

  • name: show what we are planning on doing
    debug:
    msg: “ensure vm with hostname {{inventory_hostname}} and ip {{hostvars[inventory_hostname][‘ip’]}} exists.”

  • name: clone vmware template and customise so it is ready for use as domain member
    vmware_guest:
    annotation: “Ansible cloned from template ‘{{template}}’ on {{hostvars[‘localhost’][‘ansible_date_time’][‘date’]}} by {{vmware_user}}”
    cluster: Dev Cluster
    datacenter: Dev
    folder: /Development/
    hostname: vsphere6
    name: “{{inventory_hostname}}”
    password: “{{ vmware_cred }}”
    resource_pool: Normal
    state: poweredon
    template: “{{template}}”
    username: ‘{{vmware_user}}’
    validate_certs: no
    networks:

  • name: VM Network
    devicetype: vmxnet3

domain: devdomain.local

gateway: redacted_ip0
ip: “{{hostvars[inventory_hostname][‘ip’]}}”
netmask: 255.255.128.0
type: static
dns_servers:

  • redacted_ip1
  • redacted_ip2
    customization:
    autologon: yes
    autologoncount: 5
    dns_servers:
  • redacted_ip1
  • redacted_ip2

domain: devdomain.local

password: “{{setup_password}}”
joindomain: dcmalvern.smcorp.speechmachines.com

domainadmin: “{{ dom_admin_user }}”
domainadminpassword: “{{ dom_admin_password }}”
runonce:

  • powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -File C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 -ForceNewSSLCert
  • C:\finishsetup.bat
    delegate_to: localhost
2

To follow up on this.

Things I have found that help are:

Set up your networking in your template as close as possible to how you want it in your cloned VMs.
I got a lot further once I set the networking up in my template VM as static (I need my clones to use static IPs).

Remove device drivers from your template for any network devices which are no longer present (You can do this by starting Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) and clicking on ‘Show hidden devices’ on the View menu.

If your VM gets stuck on the windows ‘Getting Ready’ screen, read this, as not only will it make you laugh and realise others have got past this particular hurdle: http://www.hurryupandwait.io/blog/getting-readytroubleshooting-unattended-windows-installation but also there’s a tip in there that will help you debug what is going on.

I had more success when I switched away from the virtual network adapters that require vmware tools - so instead of using VMXNet 3, things seemed to work better using device type: ‘e1000e’ - obviously this is somewhat hardware dependent so things may be different elsewhere. Again, set this up in the template as well is in your playbook.

Hope this helps anyone else trying to do this.

Jon