VM Prep Tool for Visual Studio Lab Management 2010
VM Prep tool has a new home at
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vslabmgmt. The tool has been updated for the RC release of Visual Studio Lab Management 2010. Please visit
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vslabmgmt for RC compatible version of the tool.
The information provided below applies to an older version of the tool
Older Version of the Tool
The VM Prep Tool takes a deployed virtual machine as a starting point, installs and configures build, lab and test agents on it and converts it into a VM template that can then be imported into the Lab management library.
Old Release
The VM Prep Tool Update 1.2 is available at
http://vslabmgmt.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=37853
Key features
- Automated installation of Build Agent, lab Agent and Test Agent on a networked domain joined virtual machine
- Automated configuration of build agent and test agent
- Automated provisioning of accounts on virtual machine to enable controller-agent communication
- New Feature in the Update 1.2 release:
- Added support for Windows Servewr 2008 Sp2, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows7 and 64 bit operating system
- Improved reliability and error handling
- Reduced number of input parameters
- Support for skipping templatization step
Known limitations
- Default Firewall settings on Workgroup machines can interfere with the tool. We recommend turning off the firewall on the VM as a work-around.
- The account used to run the tool must be administrator on the host used to deploy the virtual machine.
- The credentials used to connect to the VM needs to be the built-in administrator account for Workgroup VMs
- Template creation could fail during sysprep step due to rearm issue. Refer http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;929828 for rearm issues. This error may occur if the Windows Software Licensing Rearm program has run more than three times in a single Windows Vista+ image. To workaround, ensure that the input VM used for template creation has not be created in this way VM1 -> Template1 -> VM2 -> Template2 -> Input VM.
- If the VMM connection is lost between the VMM Administrative Console and the VMM Server, the script will fail. Re-run the tool when the connection is available.
User Guide
- The user guide including pre-requisites, installation and execution steps is available in the documentation section: