Customization Spec Vs powershell scripts

[arvindathere]

Hi LucD​,

I need to automate network setting on VMs.

Am trying to decide which of the below two methods is best suited for

Network Setting on VMs

using VM Customization Spec	Power shell scripts using  Invoke-Vm script
Doesnt require VM passwords	Requires VM password
better suited for fresh VM clone or VM from templates ??	On existing VM ??
..	..

Based on your experience and awareness, could you help me with below qns

Which of the two is widely used  ? Do you think there is a preferred approach for  network setting ?

Is there any specific condition in which each of these approaches should be used ?

Any merits and demerits for each approach other than password  ?

Thanks,

Arvind

[LucD]

Which Guest OS are we talking about?

[arvindathere]

That would be any of below flavors

1. Linux [CentOS 6.x , 7.x  Rhel 6.x 7.x Ubuntu 16.04 , SUSE 12,15]
2. Windows 7/8/10, Windows Server 2012_r2, Server 2016

Regards,

Arvind

[LucD]

The major issue with Invoke-VMScript, besides the password, is that it does not support multi-line bash scripts currently.

As an alternative, you could look at my Invoke-VMScriptPlus function.

A drawback with OScustomizationSpec is that it does not cover all OS configuration features for Linux systems.

As an alternative for that, you could use pre- and post-customization scripts.

But then you are very close to using Invoke-VMScript(Plus) but without the password.

What I usually do:

- when the target Guest OS is Windows I use an OSCustomizationSpec

- the network part might become tricky when a VM has multiple vNICs. Then I tend to use Invoke-VMScript to run the network config via netssh (or some similar command)

- when the target Guest OS is Linux I a common deployment mechanism, like for example cloud-init.

- For fine-tuning a Linux Guest OS I use my Invoke-VMScriptPlus function