Joining VMs to the domain is a part of vCloud Director VMs customization process. While configuring the guest customization screen for your VMs in vCloud Director to join the domain is a straight forward & easy process, there seems to be many situations where VMs just fail to join the domain as a part of the Windows VM customization process. The below list will help you try to pin point the problem and fix it as quickly as possible.
- First of all make sure to use DHCP for your IP assignment rather than Static IP Pool, as DHCP is a requirement for the vCloud Director Customization to be able to join VMs to the domain. This is pointed out in the following KB: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1026326, while I agree it could have been nice if it was stated a bit more clearly.
This seems to be the most missed issue with getting VMs to join the domain using the vCloud Director Customization, the reason it does not work with Static IP Pool, is that Sysprep reset the IP of the machine before joining the domain which has forced VMware to get the customization script to inject the IP of the Static IP pool after the joining the domain step is being completed by the Sysprep.… Read More