Tuesday, April 26, 2011

When to SnapShot your VMware Guests

To non-nerds that title probably sounds like a mental meltdown, or some bizarre Xbox 360 game tactic.  I've learned the hard way, that when you create a new guest virtual machine, to do the following:

  • Snapshot BEFORE installing the guest operating system
  • Snapshot AFTER installing and patching it up to date
  • Snapshot BEFORE installing any non-standard roles/features or add-ons
  • Snapshot BEFORE installing any third-party products

If you're going to use the guest to perform SYSPREP and WIM capturing:

  • Snapshot it BEFORE running SYSPREP

That last one has saved me more time and headache than I can count.  In fact, I really cannot count.  I just fake it pretty well.

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