OverviewThe System Preparation (Sysprep) tool prepares a Windows installation for duplication, also called imaging, and allows you to capture a customized Windows image that can be reused throughout your organization . This can be especially useful when provisioning machines for a team of BizTalk developers. Installing and configuring BizTalk Server computers from scratch increases project completion time. The other main benefit is ensuring that each developer is working on a consistent setup reducing the chances of "works on my computer" incidents. However, Sysprepping a BizTalk Server image is not as simple as Sysprepping a base operating system image; mainly due to BizTalk Server's dependency on SQL Server. BizTalk Server comes with some sample Sysprep scripts, but like most examples these serve only as a base and require some customizations and additions. The documentation accompanying the example scripts is misleading in places and contains some gaps that may cause confusion. In this article I will cover the steps required to Sysprep a fully configured BizTalk Server virtual machine. Golden Image The Golden Image is an isolated virtual machine configured with: • Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition • SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition • BizTalk Server 2010 Enterprise Edition ○ Enterprise SSO ○ BizTalk Runtime ○ Business Rules Engine ○ BAM Tools § BAM Alerts ○ BAM Portal • BizTalk Server 2010 ESB Toolkit ○ Exception Management ○ ESB Core Components • Visual Studio 2010 Premium EditionStepsInstall and configure the software listed above using local accounts and groups.PrerequisitesYou need to make a number of post-configuration and pre-sysprep changes which will also reduce the changes required during Sysprep such as complexity of the scripts. These are: •