The following templates are available:
- CentOS 7 - "make centos7"
- Ubuntu 16.04 - "make ubuntu16.04"
CentOS 7 builds against ESXi - see notes below. Ubuntu builds against Virtualbox (I left all the files the same just organized into a directory)
Packer builds directly agianst a single ESXi host, not against vCenter.
By default Packer supports esx5 (hw version 9). The config files build with hw version 11 and OS type "centos-64". HW version 13 (ESXi 6.5) supports OS type "centos7-64" but don't think it matters too much.
Packer doesn't play nice with VMware Distributed Switches - build on a host using a normal vSwitch.
The ESXi host you are building against requires the following to be done:
Enable Guest IP hack (allows Packer to infer the guest IP from ESXi):
esxcli system settings advanced set -o /Net/GuestIPHack -i 1
Open the firewall ports for VNC:
chmod 644 /etc/vmware/firewall/service.xml chmod +t /etc/vmware/firewall/service.xml
Append the VNC port range to /etc/vmware/firewall/service.xml:
packer-vnc inbound tcp dst 5900 6000 true true
Restore permissions and refresh the firewall:
chmod 444 /etc/vmware/firewall/service.xml esxcli network firewall refresh