Hyper-V packer templates

This project aims to expose a simple, configurable and tailored packer template for building Vagrant base boxes for Hyper-V.

Why another template project

There are many templates, and existing Vagrant boxes available so why bother re-inventing the wheel? Well in my experience all the projects I looked at either tried to do too much or had Hyper-V as a second class citizen. Further more if I wanted to configure the build boxes I had to fully understand the project and where it's configuration is hidden.

So the goals for this project are simple:

Hyper-V must be the main supported builder.
Limit the number of supported OS's to enable a clean project without a large amount of if/else style configuration.
Make anything that a user might want to modify configurable within a build process without the need to resort to modifing templates or internal OS installation files etc.

Prerequisites

Packer
PowerShell - for our build scripts
Hyper-V
1. Windows 10 build 17063 or greater is required for enhanced mode support. See https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/virtualization/2018/02/28/sneak-peek-taking-a-spin-with-enhanced-linux-vms/
Intel CPU with VT-X - needed for nested virtualization. If you do not have a supported CPU set enable_virtualization_extensions to false in hyperv-windows-10.json

Usage

Ubuntu 20.04 x64

A PowerShell build script has been created to handle build and configuration for the vagrant boxes.

From a PowerShell command prompt in the project root:

get-help .\build.ps1 -detailed

This will show all the configuration options available.

A default build can be run like this:

.\build.ps1

Windows 10 x64