Packer Plugin for VMware

The Packer Plugin for VMware is a multi-component plugin that can be used with Packer to create virtual machine images for use with VMware vSphere Hypervisor and desktop virtualization products such as VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation, and VMware Player,

The plugin includes two builders which are able to create images, depending on your desired strategy:

• vmware-iso - This builder creates a virtual machine, installs an operating system from an ISO, provisions software within the operating system, and then exports the virtual machine as an image. This is best for those who want to start by creating a base image.

• vmware-vmx - This builder imports an existing virtual machine (from a.vmx file), runs provisioners on the virtual machine, and then exports the virtual machine as an image. This is best for those who want to start from an existing virtual machine as the source. You can feed the artifact of this builder back into Packer to iterate on a machine image.

Differences from the Packer Plugin for VMware vSphere

While both this plugin and the packer-plugin-vsphere are designed to create virtual machine images, there are some key differences:

• Platforms: This plugin facilitates the creation of virtual machine images by integrating with VMware vSphere Hypervisor and desktop virtualization products such as VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation, and VMware Player; without using the VMware vSphere API. On the other hand, packer-plugin-vsphere is specifically developed to utilize the VMware vSphere API, facilitating the creation of virtual machine images by integrating with VMware vCenter Server and the VMware vSphere Hypervisor.

• Focus: This plugin is purpose-built with a focus on VMware vSphere Hypervisor and desktop virtualization products such as VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation, and VMware Player. In contrast, packer-plugin-vsphere, includes builders and post-processors with a focus on VMware vSphere, offering capabilities such as creating virtual machine images, cloning and modifying base virtual machine images, and exporting artifacts in specified locations and formats.

Please refer to the documentation for each plugin to understand the specific capabilities and configuration options.

Requirements

Desktop Hypervisor:

• VMware Fusion Pro (macOS)
• VMware Workstation Pro (Linux and Windows)
• VMware Workstation Player (Linux)

Bare Metal Hypervisor:

• VMware vSphere Hypervisor

The plugin supports versions in accordance with the VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix from General Availability to End of General Support. Learn more: VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix

Go:

• Go 1.18

  Required if building the plugin.

Usage

For a few examples on how to use this plugin with Packer refer to the example template directory.

Installation

Using Pre-built Releases

Automatic Installation

Packer v1.7.0 and later supports the packer init command which enables the automatic installation of Packer plugins. For more information, see the Packer documentation.

To install this plugin, copy and paste this code (HCL2) into your Packer configuration and run packer init.

packer {
  required_version = ">= 1.7.0"
  required_plugins {
    vmware = {
      version = ">= 1.0.0"
      source  = "github.com/hashicorp/vmware"
    }
  }
}

Manual Installation

Packer v1.8.0 and later supports the packer plugins command which enables the management of external plugins required by a configuration.

For example, to download and install the latest available version of this plugin, run the following:

packer plugins install github.com/hashicorp/vmware

For environments where the Packer host can not communicate with GitHub (e.g., a dark-site), you can download pre-built binary releases of the plugin from GitHub. Once you have downloaded the latest release archive for your target operating system and architecture, decompress to retrieve the plugin binary file for your platform.

To transfer and install the downloaded plugin, please follow the Packer documentation on installing a plugin.

Using the Source

If you prefer to build the plugin from sources, clone the GitHub repository locally and run the command go build from the repository root directory. Upon successful compilation, a packer-plugin-vmware plugin binary file can be found in the root directory.

To install the compiled plugin, please follow the Packer documentation on installing a plugin.

Configuration

For more information on how to configure the plugin, please see the plugin documentation.

• vmware-iso builder documentation
• vmware-vmx builder documentation

Contributing

• If you think you've found a bug in the code or you have a question regarding the usage of this software, please reach out to us by opening an issue in this GitHub repository.

• Contributions to this project are welcome: if you want to add a feature or a fix a bug, please do so by opening a pull request in this GitHub repository. In case of feature contribution, we kindly ask you to open an issue to discuss it beforehand.