Having templates and cloning VM’s can be very handy for fast deployment. Suppose that you want to deploy an instance of a sophisticated Web application consisting of different functional servers like database, web, mail, messaging, etc. It is desirable to clone the whole application, saving lots of time to configure each server and establish connectivity between them. VMware enables us to do this by using vApp templates. vApp templates are also available in vCloud Director.

However, when it comes to Microsoft SQL Server, an issue is raised when you rename the server during cloning or customize operating system in vCloud! It’s because SQL server contains some internal databases (like master) and metadata that store system name and working with SQL server in this situation will cause problems. To prevent this issue, you can do the following:

1) Enable a sysadmin SQL account (like ‘sa’) before cloning.

2) After clone, login to new SQL Server using a non-Windows sysadmin (like ‘sa’)

3) issue the following commands in a Query window:
exec sp_dropserver ‘OldserverName’
go
exec sp_addserver ‘NewServerName’, ‘LOCAL’
go

4) Restart SQL Server services