Windows Templates

Windows 10

These should be valid for any Windows 10 build.

Installation

In my templates, I configured the user to be adminuser, to help differentiate it from other default users, as well as named the system template. This name should be changed via a Dropship module.

WinRM

For Ansible to be able to access Windows systems, we need to enable WinRM for remote management. Thankfully, Ansible provides a nice script to help us. In a Administrator level Powershell window, run the following:

[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12
$url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ansible/ansible/devel/examples/scripts/ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1"
$file = "$env:temp\ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1"

(New-Object -TypeName System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile($url, $file)

powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -File $file

Applications

To install applications, I use Ninite, which is a great way to install a number of applications quickly and easily.

Preparing for Sysprep

Sysprep will prepare the system for cloning, but we want to ensure we skip Windows setup. This can be done with a unattend XML file. I use one I crafted here.

I recommend placing it in C:\.

Sysprep

Note

Before I run Sysprep, I usually create a snapshot of the VM, so I can revert if I forgot something. This is to save time for regenerating things (especially on Windows, which not only takes a very long time, but also has a sysprep limit)

Run Sysprep with the following options in an Administrator console:

sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /unattend:C:\unattend.xml /shutdown