clone vm change network identity

Question

I'm trying to script (powershell/powercli) the cloning of our QA environment (261 servers). Basically I want to make a new copy of each server just changing the VM name, the hostname, and the IP address. Ideally I'd want the new clone on the domain (90% of them are Windows OS). And many of my servers have many large hard drives that won't all fit on one datastore so I have to be able to clone to multiple datastores.

I started off with New-VM for the servers that were small enough to fit on one datastore, but OSCustomization only works about 30% of the time. The rest of the time I have to login to Windows and manually remove from the domain to rename the hostname. Most of the time Set-OSCustomizationNicMapping works But specifying -Domain -DomainUsername/Password never works (at best it renames the server and puts in the "domain-name" workgroup but it never joins it to the domain).

To workaround the multidatastore issue I discovered $vm.ExtensionData.CloneVM using VMWare.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateSpec to specify which hard drives go to which datastores and that works great, but I don't know how to customize the hostname or NIC settings.

So the basic requirements are: clone to multiple datastores changing hostname and IP settings. Does anyone have any recommendations or solutions?

Here's some of my code snippets:

Setting up the OSCustomizationSpec for New-VM

$spec = New-OSCustomizationSpec -Name "PowerCLI Scripting for $NewHostName" -Spec "PowerCLI Scripting" -WhatIf:$False
Set-OSCustomizationSpec $spec -Workgroup "WORKGROUP" -DomainUsername "qajoin@qa.company.com" -DomainPassword (Get-Password -Username "qa\qajoin") -ProductKey $ProductKey -AdminPassword (Get-Password $Script:LuserName) | Out-Null
Get-OSCustomizationSpec "PowerCLI Scripting for $NewHostName" `
| Get-OSCustomizationNicMapping `
| Set-OSCustomizationNicMapping `
-IPMode:UseStaticIP `
-IPAddress $NewIPAddress `
-SubnetMask "255.255.248.0" `
-DNS "10.26.40.115","10.26.40.116" `
-DefaultGateway $NewDFGW | Out-Null

The New-VM command:

$VM = New-VM -VMHost $VMHost -VM $Hostname -Name $NewHostName -Description "$Description" -OSCustomizationSpec "PowerCLI Scripting for $NewHostName" -Location (Get-Folder -Id $Location) -Datastore $MostFreeSpace -ErrorAction Stop

Here's the multi-datastore clone:

$VMXtargetDatastore = Get-Datastore ($MapInfo | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq "Hard disk 1"}).NewDataStore

#Create an empty CloneSpec
$spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineCloneSpec 
$spec.Template = $false
 $spec.PowerOn = $false

 #Create a RelocateSpec (datastore is target for .vmx)
$spec.Location = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateSpec
$spec.Location.Datastore = $targetDatastore.ExtensionData.MoRef

#For each disk in the current vm
#  create a new DiskLocator spec
#  populate the datastore and diskid from the current harddisk
#  add the spec to RelocateSpec from above
Get-HardDisk -VM $Origvm | %{
    $disk = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateSpecDiskLocator
    $disk.diskId = $_.ExtensionData.Key #2001,2002,2003,...
    $DiskLabel = $_.ExtensionData.DeviceInfo.Label
    #$disk.datastore = $_.ExtensionData.Backing.Datastore #type=datastore value=datastore-2790
    $dsname = ($MapInfo | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq $DiskLabel}).NewDataStore
    $ds = Get-Datastore -Name $dsname
    $disk.datastore = $ds.id
    $spec.Location.Disk += $disk
}

$CustSpec = New-Object VMware.Vim.CustomizationSpec
$origvm.ExtensionData.CloneVM((Get-Folder -Id $folder).ExtensionData.MoRef, $targetName, $spec)

I'm guessing the next step using the ExtensionData.CloneVM method is to declare a new object of CustomizationIdentitySettings but the documentation (http://pubs.vmware.com/vi3/sdk/ReferenceGuide/vim.vm.customization.IdentitySettings.html) that I could find isn't really helpful (probably because the settings vary by OS?) and then add that object to my $spec object. Same would go for OSCustomizationNicMapping (http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/PowerCLI/PowerCLI41U1/html/OSCustomizationNicMapping.html) but I can't suss enough information out of the pubs to figure out how to build my $spec object.

Answer 1

I finally found this page: http://www.vmdev.info/?p=202 I started with the example they show and it worked, so I kept adding in CloneSpec fields until I got what I wanted:

    $nicMaparray = @()
    $FirstNic = New-Object VMware.Vim.CustomizationAdapterMapping
        $FirstNic.adapter = New-Object VMware.Vim.CustomizationIPSettings
            $FirstNic.adapter.dnsDomain = $domain
            $FirstNic.adapter.dnsServerList = "10.26.40.115","10.26.40.116"
            $FirstNic.adapter.gateway = $DefGW
            $FirstNic.adapter.ip = New-Object Vmware.Vim.CustomizationFixedIp
                $FirstNic.adapter.ip.IpAddress = $NewIP
            $FirstNic.adapter.subnetMask = "255.255.248.0"
    $nicMaparray += $FirstNic

    $folderobj = $origvm.parent
    $vm = Get-VM $sourceName | Get-View
    $cloneName = $targetName
    $cloneFolder = Convert-PathToFolderObject -FolderPath $folderpath
    $cloneSpec = new-object Vmware.Vim.VirtualMachineCloneSpec
    $cloneSpec.Location = new-object Vmware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateSpec
    $cloneSpec.Location.Host = (Random(Get-VMHost | Where {$_.Name -like "*esxiqa*"}) | get-view).MoRef
    $targetDatastore = ($MapInfo | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq "Hard disk 1"}).NewDataStore
    $cloneSpec.Location.Datastore = (Get-Datastore $targetDatastore | get-view).MoRef
        $cloneSpec.customization = New-Object VMware.Vim.CustomizationSpec
            $cloneSpec.customization.globalIPSettings = New-Object VMware.Vim.CustomizationGlobalIPSettings
                $cloneSpec.customization.globalIPSettings.dnsServerList = "10.26.40.115","10.26.40.116"
            $cloneSpec.customization.identity = New-Object VMware.Vim.CustomizationSysprep
#           $spec.customization.identity.guiRunOnce = New-Object VMware.Vim.CustomizationGuiRunOnce
            $cloneSpec.customization.identity.guiUnattended = New-Object VMware.Vim.CustomizationGuiUnattended
                $cloneSpec.customization.identity.guiUnattended.autoLogonCount = 0
                $cloneSpec.customization.identity.guiUnattended.password = New-Object VMware.Vim.CustomizationPassword
                    $cloneSpec.customization.identity.guiUnattended.password.plainText = $true
                    $cloneSpec.customization.identity.guiUnattended.password.value = Get-Password -Username "Administrator"
            $cloneSpec.customization.identity.identification = New-Object VMware.Vim.CustomizationIdentification
                $cloneSpec.customization.identity.identification.joinWorkgroup = "WORKGROUP"
#           $spec.customization.identity.licenseFilePrintData = $null
            $cloneSpec.customization.identity.userData = New-Object VMware.Vim.CustomizationUserData
                $cloneSpec.customization.identity.userData.computerName = New-Object VMware.Vim.CustomizationFixedName
                    $cloneSpec.customization.identity.userData.computerName.name = $cloneName
                $cloneSpec.customization.identity.userData.productID = $ProductKey
            $cloneSpec.customization.nicSettingMap = $nicMaparray
                #nicMaparray build above
#           $cloneSpec.customization.options = $null
    $cloneSpec.powerOn = $true

    Get-HardDisk -VM $sourceName | %{
        $disk = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateSpecDiskLocator
        $disk.diskId = $_.ExtensionData.Key #2001,2002,2003,...
        $DiskLabel = $_.ExtensionData.DeviceInfo.Label
        $dsname = ($MapInfo | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq $DiskLabel}).NewDataStore
        $ds = Get-Datastore -Name $dsname
        $disk.datastore = $ds.id
        $cloneSpec.Location.Disk += $disk
    }

    Write-Verbose "Cloning $sourceName"
    try
    {
        $vm.CloneVM( $cloneFolder, $cloneName, $cloneSpec)
        return $true
    }
    catch
    {
        $_.Exception
        return $false
    }

Answer 2

Can't you copy to an isolated environment? Just build a set of extra (isolated) VLANs and copy all VMs, keep IP/Names, only switch the VLAN at the VM level.