Cloning a Gold/Base Image with the VMware Carbon Black Cloud sensor for VDI

Issue

Can I clone a gold/base image with the VMware Carbon Black Cloud sensor installed used in a non persistent virtual machine environment?

Environment

VMware Carbon Black Cloud

Resolution

If you are cloning a gold/base image for a pool of non persistent virtual machines, it is recommended to uninstall the VMware Carbon Black Cloud sensor prior to cloning.

1. Uninstall the VMware Carbon Black Cloud sensor from the gold/base image to be cloned. See Uninstall a Windows sensor from an Endpoint for more information.
2. Clone the desired image.
3. Perform sysprep on the new virtual machine created. This will ensure the image has a unique SID. See Sysprep (Generalize) a Windows installation for more information.
4. Install the VMware Carbon Black Cloud sensor on both gold images. 
   • For VMware Horizon Desktops, see Install the VMware Carbon Black Windows Sensor on a Horizon Golden Image
   • For Citrix Desktops, see Install the Sensor on a Citrix Golden Image
   • Note: Remember to include a CLI_USERS= <UserGroupSid> with your install command. This will provide the proper permissions to run RepCLI commands on clones.
5. Complete an expedited background scan on both images prior to publishing. See Enable Background Scan for more information.
   • You can track the progress of the scan on an image by opening a command prompt and running the command repcli status.
6. Apply a specific policy to the golden/base image. See VMware Carbon Black Windows Sensor Policy Setting Recommendations for Horizon Instant Clones for more information.
7. Snapshot the image and publish.

Cause

Carbon Black Cloud will reference the SID of a particular endpoint when assigning a unique device ID. Uninstalling the sensor prior to cloning as well as sysprep can ensure that the gold/base image has a unique SID to avoid duplicate device IDs being used on within the Carbon Black Cloud console.