Step 30: After first reboot, you’ll see this screan.

Step 31: Select “Firewall configuration” and disable it.

Step 32: Select “Services configuration”:

Step 33: Leave enable only these services for minimal installation:

Step 34: Reboot your virtual machine.

Step 35: Login your VM and execute:

nano /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

Step 36: Remove HWADDR line to prevent ethernet issues.
Save the document by typing CTRL + O, Enter, CTRL + X, Enter.

Step 37: Copy ethernet configuration.

cp /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0.bak

Step 38: Execute Set-LinuxVM to give internet access to VM. So we can do latest updates.

Set-LinuxVM -VM "CentOS 5.6 x64" -Distro "Centos" -Username "root" -Password "password" -Hostname "localhost.localdomain" -IPAddress "192.168.2.2" -SubnetMask "255.255.255.0" -GatewayAddress "192.168.2.1"

Step 39: Execute the command below to update your VM.
Press “Yes” for the further questions.

yum update

Step 40: Clear ethernet configuration.

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rm -rf /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
mv /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0.bak /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

Step 41: Clean bash history with the command below.

history -c

Step 42: Turn off your Virtual Machine.

Step 43: Right click on Virtual Machine and click “New template”.

Step 44: Put template information.

Step 45: Leave hardware properties as default.

Step 46: Most important! Choose “[Customization not required]” to provision Linux VMs.

Step 47: Choose your library server, then choose a share path.

Step 48: Click “Create” button to start creation process.

Step 49: Go to template properties. Type distro name to the “Tag” field.

Step 50: Go to “Custom Properties” tab. Type username into first field, type password into second field.

So with these changes, Set-LinuxVM looks for distro, username and password information from template.
You won’t need to use them again.

If you create a Linux VM from this template, use Set-LinuxVM like below:

Set-LinuxVM -VM "Linux Test 01" -Distro "Template" -Username "Template" -Password "Template" -Hostname "centos.yusufozturk.info" -IPAddress "192.168.2.2" -SubnetMask "255.255.255.0" -GatewayAddress "192.168.2.1" -VMTemplateName "CentOS 5.6 x64" -NewPassword "NewRootPassword!"

You should use Set-LinuxVM version 2.3 or newer to use template functionality.

Step 9: Press Enter to start CentOS 5.6 x64 installation.

Step 10: Skip CD checking and choose a language.

Step 11: Choose keyboard and click “Next”.

Step 12: You will see a warning about initializing disk drive. Click “Yes” and continue:

Step 13: Click “Review and modify partitioning layout” and click “Next”.

Step 14: Click “Yes” for warning to continue:

Step 15: Delete pre-defined volumes by clicking “Delete” button.

Step 16: After you clear volumes, go to LVM and click “Edit” button.

Step 17: Click “Add” button to create new partitions in LVM.

Step 18: Create mount points and sizes as you want.

Step 19: As an example, I create a Swap partition as 8192 MB. Because swap should be twice of your memory.

Step 20: Create /tmp mount point as 4096 MB.

Step 21: Use all available space for / mount point. In this case I have only 8064 MB disk space.

Step 22: So final partitioning layout should be:

Update: You should first create / mount point. Otherwise you can’t extend LVM with Set-LinuxVM.
So / mount point should be “LogVol00”. Please check new capture:

Step 23: Next page, choose “GRUB boot loader” and click “Next”.

Step 24: Leave all default but clear “Active on Boot” option.

Step 25: Choose your timezone and next page assign a root password.

Step 26: Clear the click of “Desktop Gnome” and click “Customize Now”.

Step 27: Click “Development Libraries” and “Development Tools”, then click “Next”.

Step 28: You can start installation by clicking “Next”.

Step 29: After installation complete, reboot virtual machine.

Hello there!

Now it’s possible to use Linux VM templates on SCVMM 2008 R2 for quick deploys if you use “Set-LinuxVM”. We just need a clean Linux template for quick deploys.

Lets start with creating our Linux VM. Go to SCVMM and click “New Virtual Machine”.

Step 1: Choose “Create the new virtual machine with a blank virtual hard disk” and click “Next”.

Step 2: Give a name and description for your Virtual Machine and click “Next”.

Step 3: You should be careful about CPU, memory and network adapter. As an example, hardware profile should be:

It’s very important to use 1 vCPU and emulated network adapter with your Linux VM template. I assign 4096 MB memory to virtual machine because usually I setup virtual machines with that memory value. If you usually setup VMs with 2048 MB memory, then give that! I assign 20 GB of disk space because I’ll split that into partitions for best performance. I’ll also use Logical Volume (LVM) to extend volumes with “Set-LinuxVM“.

Step 4: Next screen, choose “Place the virtual machine on a host”.

Step 5: Select a host and storage volume, then click “Next”.

Step 6: Choose Virtual Network for VM and click “Next”.

Step 7: Set additional properties and click “Next”.

Step 8: Click “Create” and finish this proccess.

After a minute, your VM will be up and ready for CentOS installation.
Insert a CentOS 5.6 x64 DVD in it and start reboot VM.