VMWare Workstation sysprep

I would like to create a sysprep with Server 2008 R2 and Server 2012. I only have very limited SSD space available, and I will often need several instances of the same OS running in a domain.

I would like to host the sysprep OS files on the SSD, and then run the rest of the OS from a HDD. Does this provide a big performance boost? I'm not entirely sure how it works, but the way I see it, the OS gets installed and runs from the SSD, then only the changes get read and written from/to the HDD (I will be creating a linked clone following the instructions from here).

So basically I intend to have the "big" files on the SSD, and the small folder (it's usually only around 15MB to start off with until it grows) on a disk drive. I often have to set up new servers and it's a real pain to have to keep copying and pasting the same VM over and then changing the MAC address etc. Will the disk drive bottleneck the SSD to the point where any performance boost is negligible?

Are you going to also be running recomposes b/c if not you may be better off with persistent clones.

g0dM@n said:

Are you going to also be running recomposes b/c if not you may be better off with persistent clones.

Click to expand...

What are recomposes? I ended up going with linked clones. The performance is pretty good with the OS residing on the SSD.

SMOKEU said:

What are recomposes? I ended up going with linked clones. The performance is pretty good with the OS residing on the SSD.

Click to expand...

Since linked-clones are based around snapshots, I usually think of the growing data as a "differential" (just like a differential backup). It will grow, and grow, and grow... even when you "delete" something, it's still part of the differential, so you're not really saving space, until a recompose.

When you recompose, all of that differential is wiped clean. In some cases, this may not be ideal. Since the VM is non-persistent, when you do a recompose, you're going back to day 1, but what you can do is update your golden image (the linked-clone master itself). Usually, windows updates should be done this way, as well as any other updates or software that are necessary on all machines. For any changes/applications/updates that you don't want across all of your machines, you'd want them virtualized (or ThinApped).

Take a peak at the documentation and the terms:
http://pubs.vmware.com/view-50/inde...UID-63C1BE4D-4B6E-446D-9E6D-1DA016B4B944.html

You should definitely make yourself every familiar with this. If you're on linked-clones, your VMs spun off of them will grow without a doubt. The reason I'm not using linked-clones at work yet is we have to find a model that can still keep user's application settings persistent. It's not easy in every environment.

Hope this helps!!