This repo gives a few examples using the latest packer (v1.5.0+) and HCL. HCL enables a lot of neat new abilities, but I couldn't find any examples for vsphere-iso or other non-cloud configurations.

This is based on tvories repo but has been expanded to include locally built (using vmware fusion, should work with workstation as well), as well as convert the Centos builder to Rocky Linux. Also reworked the folder structure a little in order to include CIS Hardening roles.

This could be broken out to multiple different config setups, but I like the fact there's only a few places to make changes.

For example, I built the portion for Rocky, but the only changes that would be required to build it as rhel/centos should be to substitute the ISO and ISO checksum and change the family from rocky to the correct family.

Also, these builds do not use/require an http process (though packer still creates one). I work remotely and had to resort to building a kickstart server running nginx in order to server out kickstart files because the vm wasn't able to hit my local http:port. Instead, these builds put everything either in cd_files (rocky), or floppy_files (windows/ubuntu), which simplifies the build a little.

The vsphere.pkr.hcl file is the main packer configuration file for building on vsphere/virtual center. The vmware.pkr.hcl file is the main packer configuration file for building on your local system.

To build Ubuntu 20.04: packer build --only vsphere-iso.ubuntu --var-file=20.04.pkrvars.hcl .

You can target specific builds with the --only parameter.

Each OS family has its own source and builder block in the vsphere.pkr.hcl file. Each specific OS version (IE ubuntu 20.04 or rocky 8) has its own variable file that contains the unique variables for the os. This means that you can build Ubuntu 20.04 from the same builder block as Ubuntu 18.04.

A few examples:

Ubuntu 18.04: packer build --only vsphere-iso.ubuntu --var-file=18.04.pkrvars.hcl .

Windows Server 2019: packer build --only vsphere-iso.windows --var-file=2019.pkrvars.hcl .

Rocky 8: packer build -force --only vmware-iso.rocky --var-file=rocky8.pkrvars.hcl .

Note the trailing . at the end of the command. That is telling packer to build everything in the current directory. This is key for any auto.pkrvars.hcl to be automatically populated.

boot_config - Stores kickstart, answerfiles, and preseed files.

boot_config/
├── 2019
│   └── Autounattend.xml
├── 2022
│   └── Autounattend.xml
├── rocky
│   └── rocky-ks.cfg
└── speedtest
    ├── meta-data
    ├── preseed.cfg
    └── user-data
└── ubuntu
    ├── meta-data
    ├── preseed.cfg
    └── user-data

These are named as to be targeted by the packer variables os_family and os_version. This is so you can dynamically pick the correct boot_config files.

cis-hardening - Stores ansible role info to harden the OS according to CIS recommendations.

cis-hardening
├── rocky-ansible
├── rocky-cis-hardening
├── ubuntu-ansible
└── ubuntu-cis-hardening

Currently only hardening Linux OSs, the *-ansible folder contains a playbook that calls role, i.e. ubuntu-ansible/playbook.yml calls the ubuntu-cis-hardening role.

ubuntu-cis-hardening role is borrowed heavily from alivx's GitHub role. rocky-cis-hardening role is based almost entirely on HarryHarcourt's role. Any changes to either role should be submitted to the main repos

drivers - VMware Tools drivers for Windows pvscsi driver and VMXNET3 driver. This allows Windows to come up with storage and network without needing to have VMware Tools installed during intial boot.

scripts - Scripts used for bootstrapping the OSes.

root directory - Where the actual key packer files exist.

This is where the sources and builds for VSphere are defined. Every build is triggered from this file. It includes Ubuntu, rocky, and Windows sources and builds.

This is where the sources and builds for VMWare are defined. Every build is triggered from this file. It includes Ubuntu, rocky, and Windows sources and builds.

This is where the hcl variables are declared. You could potentially put this at the top of your vsphere.pkr.hcl file, but it's good practice to keep your variables files separate.

There are some defaults defined in this file, but for the most part variables are declared in the individual OS variable files.

2019.pkrvars.hcl

• Windows 2019 Eval build options

2022.pkrvars.hcl

• Windows 2022 Eval build options

18.04.pkrvars.hcl

• Ubuntu 18.04.06LTS build options

20.04.pkrvars.hcl

• Ubuntu 20.04.02LTS build options

20.04-speedtest.pkrvars.hcl

• Ubuntu 20.04.02LTS build options for a specific speedtest build

rocky8.pkrvars.hcl

• Rocky Linux 8 build - should be compatible with RHEL8/CENTOS8/AmalLinux8

These files are specifically provided during the packer command to tell packer which build to process. An example packer command would be: packer build -force --only vsphere-iso.windows --var-file=2019.pkrvars.hcl .

Note the trailing period in that command. That is telling packer to build everything in the directory, which is required to get the auto.pkrvars.hcl to work correctly. Note in that command the --only flag. That tells packer to only build the vsphere-iso.windows source.