Joining a VM to a Domain with vCloud Director

calendar Jun 12, 2012 · 1 min read · vCloud Director  ·
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Question. According to this KB http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1026326 , Windows VMs in vCloud Director need to be configured with DHCP to be able to join a Microsoft Active Directory domain. I have a VM with a static IP address. How do I get around this requirement?

Answer. The issue around DHCP is Microsoft-related and not VMware. The problem is that we rely on Sysprep to perform the customization and this is where the DHCP requirement comes in. As a workaround, we ran a script called SetupCommand.cmd which calls the netdom.exe command with the following syntax:

1netdom.exe join %COMPUTERNAME% /Domain:vmware.com /OU:OU=vApp-VMs,DC=vmware,DC=com /Userd:???? /PasswordD:???? /Reboot
To configure this:
  1. Before submitting the vApp to the catalog.
  2. Right click the VM and select Properties.
  3. Select the Guest OS Customization tab.
  4. Scroll down to the Customization Script sections and enter the command.

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