VM connectivity is not good after new provisioning from template

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0
• VMware vCenter Server
• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

• There is some possibility that a Windows virtual machine provisioned by Aria Automation failed to reach by Ping.
• Customization Specification was applied to provision the virtual machine.
• In Windows system event, there is Event 219(212) indicating "The driver \Driver\WudfRd failed to load"
  
  
  
  
  
• Check Ethernet adapter GUID, the GUID obtained by two methods below are different, which is not an expected result.
  
  
  • Run PowerShell command "Get-NetAdapter | Select-Object Name, InterfaceGuid"
    
    
  • In "Microsoft-Windows-DeviceSetupManager/Admin" event log, the Ethernet adapter GUID in service can be obtained by searching:
    
    Device container "<Ethernet Adapter name>" ({GUID}) has been serviced.

Environment

VMware ESXi

vCenter Server

Aria Automation 8.x

Cause

• During VM customization, sysprep runs as the command below. "C:\Windows\Panther\unattend.xml" is the answer file.
  
  C:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /quiet /generalize /oobe /reboot /unattend:C:\Windows\Panther\unattend.xml


• According to customization log "C:\Windows\Temp\vmware-imc\guestcust.log", the answer file "C:\Windows\Panther\unattend.xml" is copied from "C:\Windows\TEMP\vmwxxxx.tmp\sysprep\sysprep.xml", the original answer file "sysprep.xml" was generated by vCenter Server.
  
  [yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss:                              :   INFO] Sysprep.xml answer file path is C:\Windows\TEMP\vmwxxxx.tmp\sysprep\sysprep.xml
  
  
• In the answer file  "C:\Windows\Panther\unattend.xml", there is a parameter named PersistAllDeviceInstalls, whose default value is true as below:
  
  <PersistAllDeviceInstalls>true</PersistAllDeviceInstalls>


• The recommendation from Microsoft is to set PersistAllDeviceInstalls to false.
  
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/customize/desktop/unattend/microsoft-windows-pnpsysprep-persistalldeviceinstalls
  
  "Warning: Avoid using PersistAllDeviceInstalls setting when the hardware and hardware configuration on the reference computer are different from those on the destination computer. "
  
  

Resolution

1. Please engage Microsoft support on how to generate the answer file with PersistAllDeviceInstalls "false".
2. Then follow the documentation below to create customization specification with answer file:
   
   Create a Customization Specification for Windows Using a Custom Sysprep Answer File

 

Additional Information

Microsoft document as below

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/customize/desktop/unattend/microsoft-windows-pnpsysprep-persistalldeviceinstalls