Which guest operating systems can be customized by SCVMM?

A crucial virtualization management feature is the ability to easily configure a new virtual machine’s identity as it is provisioned from a template.  This is commonly known as guest operating system customization.

I was poking around with the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM) PowerShell functionality and came across an interesting cmdlet that can be used to reveal which guest operating systems are customizable:

PS C:\Windows\System32> Get-OperatingSystem |
>> where { $_.IsCustomizationAllowed -eq $true } | sort | ft Name

Which yields the following list:

Name
----
64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Datacenter
64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise
64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Standard
64-bit edition of Windows Vista
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Windows 2000 Server
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition (32-bit x86)
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter x64 Edition
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (32-bit x86)
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition
Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition (32-bit x86)
Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 Edition
Windows Server 2003 Web Edition
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter 32-Bit
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise 32-Bit
Windows Server 2008 Standard 32-Bit
Windows Small Business Server 2003
Windows Vista
Windows Web Server 2008
Windows XP 64-Bit Edition
Windows XP Professional

Interesting.  No Linux?  I thought SCVMM and Hyper-V were embracing at least one Linux distribution.  Let’s try the converse of that command:

PS C:\Windows\System32> Get-OperatingSystem |
>> where { $_.IsCustomizationAllowed -eq $false } | sort | ft Name

Name
----
None
Novell NetWare 5.1
Novell NetWare 6.x
Open Enterprise Server
Other (32 bit)
Other (64 bit)
Other Linux (32 bit)
Other Linux (64 bit)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (64 bit)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (64 bit)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (64 bit)
Sun Solaris 10 (32 bit)
Sun Solaris 10 (64 bit)
Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 (32 bit)
Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 (64 bit)
Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9 (32 bit)
Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9 (64 bit)
Ubuntu Linux (32 bit)
Ubuntu Linux (64 bit)
Windows NT Server 4.0

Whoa! Why is SLES 10 is on that list?  That is a supported guest OS.

Sometimes supported doesn’t mean fully functional. For a virtualization platform that treats Linux workloads like first-class citizens, choose VMware ESX with vCenter Server: