We are trying to distribute a virtualized version of our product (a tiny computer) by setting up a virtual machine, installing all of our software on it, exporting it as an appliance, and distributing this appliance to users. The issue is, we rely on the MAC address of each of our physical devices to be unique for registration purposes, and every VM that is created from the image of our original VM has the same MAC address by default.
So the question is, is there some way to distribute VM-appliance images such that each one generated a unique mac-address on boot? If not, are there any unique identifiers (unique across all copies of the same image) that we could use in place of a mac-address to do this?
If using VirtualBox, the only way to ensure a different mac address from the original source is to make a new clone and ensuring to check the "Reinitialice MAC Address", then, export the appliance from the new clone. Due the fact that you can do this also from "vboxmanage", and also, from the same utility you can change the macaddress of the machine, you can set up your clone with the specific mac for your customer "X" first (scripted), then from it create the appliance !.
Later, export the appliance with the same utility:
Remember you can script everything !.