I was asked to build a test environment, however what was not brought up was the fact that I need to be able to create multiple versions of this image and on the fly when need be.

Is there steps or a process to creating an image or ISO?

We need to know what vmware product you are using. This can be done various ways depending on what you are using as the host.

Nick

Nevermind, you are running vmware server. You could create your master virtual machine. Shut it down and then copy the vmdk file. Then use a copy of this hard drive file each time you wish to create a new copy of the vm. Will proabably want to sysprep it first though.

ok well it sounds like I have some digging to do learning how to what I guess is clone the image.  Any documentation out there that talks about cloning by chance?

It really is as easy as nhidalgo said, create a vm get it configured how you want then shut the vm down.  Go to the file system of your VM Host (server) and copy the .vmdk files into another folder.  Then when you need a new copy of that machine, make a copy of your copied .vmdk files and when you make a new VM tell it you want to use an existing .vmdk (hard disk image) and point it to the copy.  You'll have a new machine configured how you want for your testing.  

As said before also, you'll probably want to sysprep it to strip out the machine specific stuff like SID, machine name, etc.  I also would not have the base image joined to the domain, that'll cause you grief as well, after you make your new machine with the existing hd image, sysprep it, or run newsid & change the name or whatever tool you choose to clean it up, then join it to the domain (if that is your intention).

h

I was able to find an article via sysprepping an OS.

What I have found out as well is that on applications which use the name of the Server like IIS or SQL should not be installed, that or errors will be received. Thank you for your time!