System Center Virtual Machine Manager

My first impressions are that it's a very cool piece of software.  I am using it in my lab to create VM's for Exchange, AD, SCCM, and SCOM.

This got me..I tried to make a template from a brand new Windows 2003 R2 install.  SCVMM made it to about 49% then it failed.  It kept warning me that the version of sysprep was incorrect.  And, of course I didn't make a clone before I started the template creation.  I thought there was an issue with my VM..so I rebuild the whole thing again...same problem.  This time I found out the error was on the SCVMM side..not my VM.  For Windows 2003 R2 SP2, there was an updated sysprep (https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=93F20BB1-97AA-4356-8B43-9584B7E72556&displaylang=en)

 

I cannot find the web page that listed the error, but you have to copy a couple of files from deploy.cab from the web download to the program files\microsoft system center virtual machine manager directory.  Look for the sysprep directory. In it you will see different versions of windows.  The one for Windows 2003 sp2 is 5.2.3790.3959. Once I replaced the files with the new ones..it went smoothly.

 

Also, I could not figure out how to install the VM Additions..I had to go back to the Web admin console..