workspace and create separate hardware profiles and guest OS profiles, which can
then be used in templates you create, avoiding the need to perform the same
configurations repeatedly. VM templates can also be exported and imported, allowing
portability between SCVMM environments.
Figure 5.27 Modifying a template within SCVMM
USING APPLICATION, SQL, ROLE, AND FEATURE TEMPLATE
CONFIGURATIONS
You will notice that the VM templates include sections related to application
configurations, SQL configuration, roles, and features. While it may seem that all
of these configurations will be used when deploying the template, this is not the
case. These components are used only when the VM template is deployed as part
of a service template, which I cover in Chapter 9. When you're deploying a
template-based virtual machine, configurations related to application, SQL, roles,
and features are ignored and not available. If you require this type of deployment,
either use service templates or manage these configurations by using PowerShell
or System Center Orchestrator as an add-on to the VM deployment.In most environments, you will have a limited number of template VHDX files but
many templates that use the same VHDX and apply different configurations and
applications. You do not want a large number of VHDX files with different
configurations and applications installed. This is hard to maintain and patch. The goal
is to have a plain, sometimes called vanilla, VHDX template with just the operating
system and then deploy all other customizations using the template options and
declarative technologies such as PowerShell DSC.
A Linux OS configuration has far fewer options than a Windows OS configuration, and