SLES 11/11sp1 Cloning or Deploy from Template Network Interface Fix

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HowTo
SLES • vSphere

So we have all seen the wonderful cloning or deploying from template of a SLES VM and suddenly the network interface changes to eth1 and you have no network connectivity.  This is in part due to the use of udev and persistent naming.  As of SLES 11, the FORCE_PERSISTENT_NAMES option has been removed.  Here are the steps to a work-around for this to enable happy cloning and deployment from a SLES template:

  1. Convert your template VM back to a normal VM.
  2. Boot your VM and login.
  3. cp /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules /root/.
  4. rm /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
  5. Shutdown the VM.
  6. Convert back to a template.

Once you do this, every time you deploy from your template a new 70-persistent-net.rules file will be generated with the new MAC address of the virtualized interface.

For reference, you can look at VMware KB Article 1021624 for information regarding this.