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Is there a way to identify a parent template for VMs. I've got a few VMs created from different templates and I need to confirm source template.

I've tried blkid and dmidecode -s system-uuid but it looks like these IDs are re-generated for new VMs.

Regards

Daniel Widrick
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HTF
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  • You may want to add what your requirements are for this. *e.g.* "Must work from within deployed VM", "I do not have access to vSphere logs", etc. – jscott Sep 16 '13 at 14:08
  • Basically I have to run some tasks on VMs and I need to use different options that depends on source template that they were build from. I think it would be easier to obtain this information from within deployed VM instead of looking into vSphere logs. – HTF Sep 16 '13 at 14:20
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    One possibility, though it's unlikely, would be to find remnants of the old virtual hardware info. For instance, in some linux distributions, network interfaces that have been removed will leave files on disk with their MAC address details in them, these could be used to figure things out, it is very dependant on the OS you're using though. – Alex Berry Sep 16 '13 at 16:31
  • @HTF Did you find the source? – ewwhite Sep 20 '13 at 12:19
  • @ewwhite I was able to identify the source based on PHP version that was installed and then I added a simple script to print template ID on the source VMs for the future. – HTF Sep 20 '13 at 13:34

2 Answers2

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You won't be able to find this information from within the VM. Are you trying to do this programmatically? If you can deal with a couple of manual steps, you can look at the virtual machine's logs in vSphere under Tasks and Events to see the VM's history.

enter image description here

You may also be able to look at the source templates' histories and glean the same information.

ewwhite
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After the fact, you may have difficulty identifying the source template from within the VM unless you add some file to the template that identifies its source.

If you don't have access to relevant vSphere logs, you may be out of luck.

Daniel Widrick
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