CompTIA Server+ SK0-005 Practice Question

The correct answer is to generalize the image using a system preparation utility. Utilities like Sysprep for Windows remove machine-specific information, most notably the Security Identifier (SID). If an image is cloned without generalization, all resulting servers will have identical SIDs, which causes significant authentication and network management problems, particularly in a domain environment. While assigning unique hostnames and IP addresses is also necessary, these actions occur after deployment and do not resolve the underlying SID conflict, which is the most critical issue to address before cloning. Updating the HCL is a pre-installation task, not part of the cloning preparation. Cloning the MAC address would cause severe network conflicts, as MAC addresses must be unique.