VMware auto machine reset

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Xaerie

Xaerie

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Jan 9, 2012
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Can you please share your thoughts on how I could potentially get a Virtual Machine (or a large number of machines) to automatically revert to its previous system settings? Something that works similar to Windows Steady State? By "revert to previous system settings" I mean anything a user could have accidentally or intentionally tampered with such as icons, network connectivity, programs/application... etc. Thank you in advance for your time.
 
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S
One thing you might try is scripting this. Anything you can do in Vsphere, you can do from a script, so it may be easy to create a script to shutdown a VM revert it back from a snapshot, and power it back up. The it's just a matter of scheduling the script to run when you want it to run.
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Xaerie

Xaerie

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Jan 9, 2012
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I'm vaguely familiar with the snapshot process. Is there a way to automate the process of reverting it to a certain snapshot or do you have to manually tell it to revert back to that snapshot?
 
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ss202sl

Glorious
May 23, 2012
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I think reverting back is a manual process. You may want to look at a product called DeepFreeze
http://www.faronics.com/products/deep-freeze/

It basically creates a base image of the computer, and when you boot to it any changes only affect the current session - when it reboots it boots the original configuration.
 
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Xaerie

Xaerie

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Jan 9, 2012
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Thank you for that suggestion. After considering that, I believe I'm looking at avoiding costs. We use a combination of Clonezilla and FOG to restore our desktops. However, I'm not trying to use those in a virtual environment as I understand that it's fairly easy to delete a problematic VM and just re deploy from a good template. I can also see Deepfreeze being used from a dekstop or laptop standpoint. Without trying to sound cheap, and although I'm sure Deepfreeze is great, I really don't want to pay for it. I'm mostly looking for a way in vSphere to make this process more convenient.

I was hoping VMware had something I wasn't yet familiar with, but it seems like snapshot is the only way to go if I didn't want to use someone elses software.

I've read that you can configure Snapshot to revert to a snapshot for the VM when it's powered off. Sounds like I'll have to dig to see if there are any automated tasks that can be setup to power cycle machines on a weekly basis? Thoughts?

 
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ss202sl

Glorious
May 23, 2012
8,431
35
44,190
One thing you might try is scripting this. Anything you can do in Vsphere, you can do from a script, so it may be easy to create a script to shutdown a VM revert it back from a snapshot, and power it back up. The it's just a matter of scheduling the script to run when you want it to run.
 
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Xaerie

Xaerie

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Jan 9, 2012
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FYI it turns out the scipts caused more issues than the actual problem we were having. We decided it wasn't worth it and have gone back and just reconfigured them all one by one... *sigh*

Thank you for all the help. It's really appreciated and valued.
 
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