I know this is slightly off-topic for this list, but it seems like a good place to ask it... I''m trying to find a way to rapidly provision Windows-based domUs. I''m very familiar with tools like sysprep, and also have tools available to create "gold images" of the Windows installs and make those available quickly. The primary challenge I''m running into is the machine name and domain membership. I was wondering if anyone knows of a way to change the machine name and join a Windows domain while the computer is booting. Although Microsoft has made great strides in not asking you to reboot after every single operation, computer name and domain membership is one of those tasks that still, curiously, requires a reboot. I''m guessing some of the services need to be restarted after a change of either of these - if I knew which ones, perhaps a boot-time script could be run that would set the machine name, join the Windows domain, and then restart the services that need to be restarted in order for the changes to take effect? Anyway, if anyone can help out with this, I''d appreciate it! Thanks, Nick -------- This e-mail may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole use of the intended recipient. If this email is not intended for you, or you are not responsible for the delivery of this message to the intended recipient, please note that this message may contain SEAKR Engineering (SEAKR) Privileged/Proprietary Information. In such a case, you are strictly prohibited from downloading, photocopying, distributing or otherwise using this message, its contents or attachments in any way. If you have received this message in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this e-mail and delete the message from your mailbox. Information contained in this message that does not relate to the business of SEAKR is neither endorsed by nor attributable to SEAKR. _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Nick Couchman wrote:> I know this is slightly off-topic for this list, but it seems like a good place to ask it... > > I''m trying to find a way to rapidly provision Windows-based domUs. I''m very familiar with tools like sysprep, and also have tools available to create "gold images" of the Windows installs and make those available quickly. The primary challenge I''m running into is the machine name and domain membership. I was wondering if anyone knows of a way to change the machine name and join a Windows domain while the computer is booting. Although Microsoft has made great strides in not asking you to reboot after every single operation, computer name and domain membership is one of those tasks that still, curiously, requires a reboot. I''m guessing some of the services need to be restarted after a change of either of these - if I knew which ones, perhaps a boot-time script could be run that would set the machine name, join the Windows domain, and then restart the services that need to be restarted in order for the changes to take effect? Anyway, if anyone can help out with this, I''d appreciate it! > > Thanks, > Nick > >Hi, We use partimage-ng for bare-metal restore of syspre''d Server (sysprep choose a randon name) & we have to the join Domain manually. We use unattended for fully automated installation which is able to join a Domain at installation time. We simply need to define some variable before installation process starts (on of them is the Server Name). Anyway W$ VM creation is always a pain compared to Linux. HTH _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 11:11, Nick Couchman <Nick.Couchman@seakr.com> wrote:> I know this is slightly off-topic for this list, but it seems like a good place to ask it... > > I''m trying to find a way to rapidly provision Windows-based domUs. I''m very familiar with tools like sysprep, and also have tools available to create "gold images" of the Windows installs and make those available quickly. The primary challenge I''m running into is the machine name and domain membership. I was wondering if anyone knows of a way to change the machine name and join a Windows domain while the computer is booting. Although Microsoft has made great strides in not asking you to reboot after every single operation, computer name and domain membership is one of those tasks that still, curiously, requires a reboot. I''m guessing some of the services need to be restarted after a change of either of these - if I knew which ones, perhaps a boot-time script could be run that would set the machine name, join the Windows domain, and then restart the services that need to be restarted in order for the changes to take effect? Anyway, if anyone can help out with this, I''d appreciate it! > > Thanks, > NickA boot-time script is certainly possible. Check out netdom.exe - it can change the name and join the machine to the domain. I created a script for this kind of work for our junior admins, so they could have it on their USB sticks. However, you risk leaving the account password hanging around, if you''re not careful - it has to be embedded in the script. Kurt _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> > A boot-time script is certainly possible. Check out netdom.exe - it > can change the name and join the machine to the domain. I created a > script for this kind of work for our junior admins, so they could have > it on their USB sticks.I''ll look for netdom - last I checked it was only in later versions of Windows - Vista and higher. Maybe there''s a download for it for XP - XP is the primary version of Windows that I''m interested in provisioning. Furthermore, AFAICT with my experience with netdom on Vista, 2008 and 7, it still requires a reboot. Maybe if the script runs at the right time it will be okay...hard to say.> > However, you risk leaving the account password hanging around, if > you''re not careful - it has to be embedded in the script. >Point taken - I''ll have to be careful with security on the script. However, I also have an account set up that has absolutely no privileges on my domain except to join workstations, so at least it''s not a full-blown administrative account. It still warrants some care in handling the script, but it should mitigate some of that risk. -Nick -------- This e-mail may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole use of the intended recipient. If this email is not intended for you, or you are not responsible for the delivery of this message to the intended recipient, please note that this message may contain SEAKR Engineering (SEAKR) Privileged/Proprietary Information. In such a case, you are strictly prohibited from downloading, photocopying, distributing or otherwise using this message, its contents or attachments in any way. If you have received this message in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this e-mail and delete the message from your mailbox. Information contained in this message that does not relate to the business of SEAKR is neither endorsed by nor attributable to SEAKR. _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 14:43, Nick Couchman <Nick.Couchman@seakr.com> wrote:>> >> A boot-time script is certainly possible. Check out netdom.exe - it >> can change the name and join the machine to the domain. I created a >> script for this kind of work for our junior admins, so they could have >> it on their USB sticks. > > I''ll look for netdom - last I checked it was only in later versions of Windows - Vista and higher. Maybe there''s a download for it for XP - XP is the primary version of Windows that I''m interested in provisioning. Furthermore, AFAICT with my experience with netdom on Vista, 2008 and 7, it still requires a reboot. Maybe if the script runs at the right time it will be okay...hard to say. > >> >> However, you risk leaving the account password hanging around, if >> you''re not careful - it has to be embedded in the script. >> > > Point taken - I''ll have to be careful with security on the script. However, I also have an account set up that has absolutely no privileges on my domain except to join workstations, so at least it''s not a full-blown administrative account. It still warrants some care in handling the script, but it should mitigate some of that risk. > > -NickNetdom.exe is available as early as NT4, though that came from the Server RK - I don''t think it was in the Workstation RK. Nowadays you can get it from the Windows Server CD - it''s part of the Support Tools - I don''t think it''s contained in adminpak.msi. Beware: The one from the Win2k3 CD doesn''t work on Win2k, though it works fine with XP. For Win2k, you''ll need the one from the Win2k RK. Don''t have any experience with Vista, 7, nor Win2k8. Kurt _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Nick Couchman <Nick.Couchman@seakr.com> wrote:> I know this is slightly off-topic for this list, but it seems like a good place to ask it... > > I''m trying to find a way to rapidly provision Windows-based domUs. I''m very familiar with tools like sysprep, and also have tools available to create "gold images" of the Windows installs and make those available quickly. The primary challenge I''m running into is the machine name and domain membership. I was wondering if anyone knows of a way to change the machine name and join a Windows domain while the computer is booting.This is a slightly "off-topic" response to your query, but I found this to be an effective method for rapid provisioning on my little xen server. I installed Server 2003, the service pack, all the windows updates, and some other generic stuff. Then I sysprep re-sealed the box. Now on the xen host (dom0), I created LVM snap-shots of the lvm device backing the original install. Since lvm does read/write snap shots, I was able to clone the config of the original machine, change the uuid, mac address and point it at the lvm snapshot. I did this twice, so I have three Server 2003 systems, all sharing the more or less static binaries of the Windows install, and the snapshots keeping track of individual changes made to each server. Instead of three 20G lvm backed devices, I have one 20G device and two 8G snapshots (of which only a few 100mb is in use so far) Gordon _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> > This is a slightly "off-topic" response to your query, but I found > this to be an effective method for rapid provisioning on my little xen > server. > > I installed Server 2003, the service pack, all the windows updates, > and some other generic stuff. Then I sysprep re-sealed the box. Now > on the xen host (dom0), I created LVM snap-shots of the lvm device > backing the original install. Since lvm does read/write snap shots, I > was able to clone the config of the original machine, change the uuid, > mac address and point it at the lvm snapshot. > > I did this twice, so I have three Server 2003 systems, all sharing the > more or less static binaries of the Windows install, and the snapshots > keeping track of individual changes made to each server. Instead of > three 20G lvm backed devices, I have one 20G device and two 8G > snapshots (of which only a few 100mb is in use so far) >Thanks, Gordon, This is essentially what I''m planning to do, except that Sysprep requires a reboot after it makes it changes and joins the domain. I''m looking for extremely rapid provisioning here, such that a reboot isn''t required at all between the time Windows starts after being provisioned and the time the user logs on. I''m actually going to be using Solaris ZFS and either iSCSI or NFS to back the domUs, as the latest rev has the built-in deduplication. This should allow me to deploy quite a few Windows domUs with far less disk overhead than either traditional file-based disks or LVM-based snapshots. The problem with snapshots is that when you delete, upgrade, etc., you continue to consume disk space - there isn''t really ever any reclamation of used disk space with completely deleting the snapshot and starting with a new one. -Nick -------- This e-mail may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole use of the intended recipient. If this email is not intended for you, or you are not responsible for the delivery of this message to the intended recipient, please note that this message may contain SEAKR Engineering (SEAKR) Privileged/Proprietary Information. In such a case, you are strictly prohibited from downloading, photocopying, distributing or otherwise using this message, its contents or attachments in any way. If you have received this message in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this e-mail and delete the message from your mailbox. Information contained in this message that does not relate to the business of SEAKR is neither endorsed by nor attributable to SEAKR. _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users