VDI Master Automation with Packer and Ansible in vSphere

This project uses Packer to create a Windows VM in VMware vSphere and configures it so Ansible can be used to further customize and install software on the operating system.

This speeds up the process of creating highly customized Master / Golden Images for VDI puposes.

Setup Automation VM

• Install Ubuntu server
• Install Packer and Ansible
  • https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/install#linux
  • https://docs.ansible.com/projects/ansible/latest/installation_guide/installation_distros.html#installing-ansible-on-ubuntu
• Install sudo apt-get install -y genisoimage which is needed for the Packer vSphere Plugin to create VMs
• Clone repo to /srv/

Create auto.pkrvars.hcl

• change directory cd to /srv/vdi-master-automation/packer
• use auto.pkrvars.hcl.sample to create auto.pkrvars.hcl with all needed variables
  • Windows and VMware Tools ISOs are needed on the datastore

Run

• change directory cd to /srv/vdi-master-automation/packer and run
  • packer init . to install Packer plugins from main.pkr.hcl
• packer validate -var-file='auto.pkrvars.hcl' . to validate main.pkr.hcl in combination with the needed variables
• packer build -var-file='auto.pkrvars.hcl' . to start the VM build process