Customized virtual machine creation

1. A method of creating a customized virtual machine comprising:

with a processor, booting a virtual machine into a service operating system;

with a customization agent embedded within the service operating system, customizing a main operating system while the virtual machine is in maintenance mode,

wherein the customization agent comprises a daemon that is automatically started on startup of the service operating system,

wherein the maintenance mode provides access to reconstituted file systems of the main operating system allowing contents of a hard disk to be altered without activating the main operating system or any applications present on the main operating system,

wherein customizing the main operating system while the virtual machine is in the maintenance mode comprises:

performing the customization based on a response file created by a response file creation module;

implementing a number of customization commands via the customization agent while the virtual machine is in the maintenance mode; and

injecting main operating system startup scripts to complete the customization once the virtual machine is rebooted into the main operating system; and

rebooting the virtual machine into the main operating system of the virtual machine.

2. The method of claim 1 , in which the service operating system is created by packaging the service operating system into an ISO image to create a bootable media.

3. The method of claim 1 , in which the service operating system is custom built.

4. The method of claim 1 , in which the service operating system is a vendor-provided service operating system.

5. The method of claim 4 , in which the vendor-provided service operating system is customized by a controller.

6. The method of claim 5 , in which an application programming framework is embedded within the service operating system to provide access to persistent data of the main operating system.

7. The method of claim 1 , in which the controller creates a new temporary virtual storage device or configures an existing virtual storage device to hold the response file.

8. The method of claim 1 , in which the service operating system is dynamically constructed with customization settings embedded into an image of the service operating system.

9. The method of claim 1 , in which booting the virtual machine into a service operating system further comprises altering the boot order of the virtual machine.

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising restoring the boot order after customizing the main operating system.

11. A system for cloning a virtual machine comprising:

a processor;

a data storage device communicatively coupled to the processor;

a response file creation module stored on the storage device that, when executed by the processor, creates a response file containing a number of virtual machine operating system customizations;

a service operating system stored on the data storage device that, when executed by the processor, boots the virtual machine into maintenance mode; and

a customization agent embedded within the service operating system, the customization agent comprising a daemon that is automatically started on startup of the service operating system;

in which the customization agent, when executed by the processor:

on its startup, automatically performs customizations based on the response file created by the response file creation module;

injects main operating system startup scripts to complete customization once the virtual machine is rebooted into the main operating system; and

receives further customization commands for the virtual machine and implements the customization commands while the virtual machine is in maintenance mode,

in which the system utilizes a response file created by the response file creation module to customize a number of parameters of an virtual machine operating system while a virtual machine is in maintenance mode.

12. A computer program product for creating a customized virtual machine, the computer program product comprising:

a computer readable storage medium comprising computer usable program code embodied therewith, the computer usable program code to when executed by a processor:

boot a virtual machine into a service operating system; and

customize a main virtual operating system while the virtual machine is in maintenance mode,

wherein customizing the main virtual operating system while the virtual machine is in maintenance mode comprises:

performing the customizations based on a response file created by a response file creation module;

implementing a number of customization commands via the customization agent while the virtual machine is in the maintenance mode; and

injecting main operating system startup scripts to complete the customization once the virtual machine is rebooted into the main operating system,

in which maintenance mode is defined as an operation mode of the operating system in which the entire operating system and all applications reside only in random access memory and do not use non-volatile forms of data storage devices.