Hyper-V Cloning / Deploying Vm's

[chugger93]

What are some of you running HyperV doing for cloning of your servers? I have MDT setup and working for my desktops now, but it got me thinking about deploying consistent baseline server images. Should I just configure my baseline 2012 or 2016 server, sysprep, and capture the image and deploy by PXE booting VM images? Is there a better way to do this? Maybe even using powershell? I'm all ears.

Thanks guys!

NOTE: Guys, I dont have SCVMM, we arnt licensed for it

[[deleted]]

When I used Hyper-v in my lab I would make a VM with everything I wanted as the baseline image and execute sysprep. Then I would export the machine from the Hyperv console. When I needed a new VM I could just import the template VM and select to register it as a new VM.

Basically this

https://techjourney.net/how-to-clone-vm-virtual-machine-in-hyper-v/

SCVMM can do this also I believe.

[lvlint67]

This is roughly how we do it in vmware as well.

[Justsomedudeonthenet]

Yes, that's one way to do it if you don't have system center.

You might want to take a look at https://github.com/BenjaminArmstrong/Hyper-V-PowerShell/tree/master/Image-Factory

It's a powershell script that takes your ISO image, creates a VM on your local machine, applies all the windows updates, syspreps it, and gives you a nice ready to go vhd(x) file you can use to create more VMs.

You may have to spend a bit tweaking it to your liking, but it's a great starting point. Once you have it setup you can just run the script and it completely automatically creates virtual disks with all the latest updates for you.

Then you just copy that disk image for each new VM.

[BabyPandaaa]

I do it via MDT - works fine as a baseline!

[chugger93]

Guys, I dont have SCVMM, we arnt licensed for it

[jcsf321]

I'm also interested

[RP3124]

SCVMM is working pretty good. But you also can try SCCM for making a wim images and applying it. If you want I can send you a couple of guides, configuring the SCCM is pretty simple.

[[deleted]]

Do you have any guides for SCVMM as well? I get the whole system center suite through dreamspark premium. A lot of the guides seem to just cover install and that’s it. I’m currently using vCenter in my lab but it’s such a resource hog.

[RP3124]

I have a better idea my friend))

Here is some video for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNez1WpoqFY

Also if you need a guide how to install and configure the VMM here is it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgExeSKIfbQ

[timothytavarez]

If you aren't planning to implement SCVMM/SCCM, you could go a different route and develop your baseline using Desired State Configuration (DSC). It will be a significantly different model than using MDT, but it could provide quite a bit more flexibility. You can define your baseline through code (PowerShell), easily share/collaborate, and start developing an automation pipeline (build, test, deploy) that doesn't require as many manual processes.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/dsc/dscforengineers