Creating a VMware Template for SuSE

# Edit the [@/etc/udev/rules.d/x0-net_persistent_names.rules@] file and comment out the lines which begin with [@SUBSYSTEM=="net"@] (i.e. Place a [@#@] character at the beginning of the line)

And while your at it, it is a good idea to setup all the standard settings present on all your servers.
# NTP
# LDAP Authentication
# SUDO
# ...

# Use YaST2 | /etc/sysconfig Editor to browse to the Network/Hardware/Config area and change the [@FORCE_PERSISTENT_NAMES@] value to [@off@].

(:title Creating a VMware Template for SuSE :)

While the title says VMware and SuSE, this should work for virtualization product (i.e. XEN) and any *nix system that uses udev persistence rules.

The basic problem is that when you clone an SuSE VM, the network configuration explodes. More specifically, the system creates new NIC devices - which have no configuration and therefore don't do anything!
The reason for this is something called udev. Udev rules in linux effectively map a MAC address to a device (i.e. 00:50:22:47:58:b0 => eth0) There are historical reasons why this is done, and it make sense if you are hot-plugging NICs in and out.
However, with a Virtual Machine Template, you want the process to be automatic. And since this will most likely be a server, we don't need to worry about hotplugged NICs so we can turn off udev for network!

While on the Template Machine:
# Edit the [@/etc/udev/rules.d/30-net_persistent_names.rules@] file and comment out the lines which begin with [@SUBSYSTEM=="net"@] (i.e. Place a [@#@] character at the beginning of the line)
# Use YaST2 | /etc/sysconfig Editor to browse to the Network/Hardware/Config area and change the FORCE_PERSISTENT_NAMES value to off.
# Reboot
# Again using YaST2 | Network Card, edit each NIC and find the Hardware Configuration Name (it should look something like [@id-00:50:22:47:58:b0@]) and change it to a number (i.e. 0 for eth0; 1 for eth1...)
# Reboot