2021

Cloning a virtual machine can come in pretty handy… Especially when you need to troubleshoot or tinker with an existing virtual machine you might just not know enough about or a previous admin didn’t document. All Admins ~ “Please DOCUMENT DOCUMENT DOCUMENT!”.
For this article, I’m going to show you step by step on how to create a clone of a virtual machine and disable the virtual NIC.

Accessing The VMware vCenter

Open any browser of your choosing (IE11, Edge, Chrome, Firefox) and enter the vCenter DNS name of your system in the URL bar for the browser.

URL for vCenter

If you’ve enter all the above information correctly. You will be prompted with a Getting Started page. Click on Launch vSphere Client (HTML5). Next, you’ll want to enter the information to access the vCenter administrative console. This section, again, can vary depending on your setup. For my case, I have SSO enabled with a IT Security group. So, I’ll enter in my domain credentials and sign in.

Cloning Virtual Machine

This should be a given but confirm you have enough resources to clone the virtual machine of your choosing or the other hosts in the cluster do.

I chose the Development – SQL19 server I have running in my development vlan. By right clicking on that virtual machine I now have a slew of options, one being the clone option… click on clone. Click Clone to Virtual Machine.
You’ll want to select

Select the datastore that best suites your needs or environment.

Check the following boxes:
* Customize this virtual machine’s hardware
* Power on virtual machine after creation

Disconnect the NIC from the vSwitch by click on the check box next to Network Adapter 1. If you have multiple NIC’s you’ll want to repeat the process.

Lastly, Clicking on the next button in the task above will start to process the cloning of the virtual machine. When the cloning is initiated you’ll see the process below in the Recent Tasks section of vCenter.

Building The Application Deployment

Download G’MIC software from here. Once you have downloaded the GIMP software, you can copy it to a folder on the ConfigMgr server or shared folder on a file server (if its in the same DC).

Specify some information about the application. Click Next.

For the Content Location, provide the path where the GIMP setup file is present. In my case I have copied the setup file to a folder named GIMP on SCCM server. The next step is to specify install and uninstall command.
Information:
Content Location: \dc19\Share\Software\Deployments\Software\GIMP\Plugins
Installation Program: “gmic_2.9.6_gimp2.10_win64.exe” /LANG=English /VERYSILENT /NORESTART /SP-
Uninstall Program: %AppData%\GIMP\2.10\plug-ins\gmic_gimp_qt\uninst\unins000.exe /VERYSILENT

Detection Method – Detection method allows the administrator to check if the application is already installed. It can also prevent an installation of an application if it conflicts with another application that is already installed. Click Configure rules to detect the presence of this deployment type and click on Add Clause.

On the Detection Rule window, choose Setting Type as Registry. Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, set the following

Detection Rule
Setting Type: Registry
Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\G’MIC-Qt for GIMP_is1