In my test environment I had a need to duplicate a Windows 2008 R2 server to do some DFS testing. Rather than install a new one and patch it, I chose to create a linked clone from within VM Workstation.
The problem with a clone is that both the original and cloned machines will have the same machine SID which I wanted to avoid.
I used a tool called psgetsid from the set of Windows Sysinternals PS Tools by Mark Russinovich (see link below).
I ran this on the original machine and the cloned machine and I could see both the SIDs were identical.
On the cloned machine I ran Sysprep from the run menu, and then selected the Generalize option to create a new SID.
Once Sysprep had completed and rebooted I got the screen below.
Once I’d completed the wizard and changed the name of the server from the automatically generated one back to srv2 I re-ran psgetsid.
Now with a unique cloned server I can get on with the DFS testing!
See the list of useful resources below.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2009/11/03/3291024.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766514%28v=ws.10%29